December 15, 2014
Volume XLX, Issue 9
Les Ottolenghi at DCIA's IoT Marathon during CES
 Las Vegas Sands Corp. Global CIO & Chief Innovation Officer Les Ottolenghi will present a principal segment of the "DCIA's Internet of Things (IoT) Marathon" webcast taking place January 6-9 during the 2015 International CES.
The DCIA's IoT Marathon will feature a major four-day online video production showcasing industry-leading developments in smart objects for fitness and healthcare; programmable homes and energy management; media entertainment and social networking solutions; geolocation services and vehicular automation; retail, public space and manufacturing environments; and power consumption, cybersecurity and interoperability.
Ottolenghi notes, "The IoT phenomenon presents new opportunities for businesses to leverage technology and data to better serve their customers. I'm excited that this event will create awareness of how IoT can be an integral part of business interactions with customers."
Production of the DCIA's IoT Marathon is scheduled during the 2015 International CES. More information about the event will be available at the DCIA Exhibit Booth in the South Hall of the Convention Center.
Las Vegas Sands Corp. is a Fortune 500 company and the leading global developer of destination properties that feature premium accommodations, world-class gaming and entertainment, convention and exhibition facilities, celebrity chef restaurants, and many other amenities.
IDC Prediction for IoT 2015: It's a Doozy
Excerpted from TechTarget Report by Kristen Lee
 Market research firm IDC presented its 2015 Predictions for the Internet of Things (IoT) this week, and my first reaction was, "This one's a doozy!" To put it another way: CIOs and CISOs, prepare for a massive flood of data and information from a slew of sensorized things, along with a lot more responsibility for IT professionals.
According to IDC, here are three important points you need to know about the IoT in 2015.
IDC predicts that within the next five years, over 90% of all IoT data will be processed by cloud service providers. "We believe IoT data will be created from a wide range of sources and data formats," said Vernon Turner, Senior Vice president at IDC.
"As such, the better IoT solutions that have greater business values will have to integrate and process data from different repositories. Cloud computing providers will be better suited to this activity, rather than IT attempting to run it on premise or in a private enterprise environment."
This will drive IT organizations to establish robust chargeback services, Turner said. This is because people will only want to pay for appropriate "data blending" services — data blending, in IDC parlance, meaning, taking the data, finding the value, and using it to benefit the business. Turner said establishing these chargeback services will become more important because IT will now be responsible for the original IoT data sources, as well as the "data blending" done by the cloud computing providers. Read more...
Five Signs the IoT Is about to Explode
Excerpted from CloudTweaks Report by Daniel Price
 By 2020, Gartner estimates that the Internet of Things (IoT) will generate incremental revenue exceeding $300 billion worldwide. It's an astoundingly large figure given that the sector barely existed three years ago.
We are now rapidly evolving toward a world in which just about everything will become connected; where Web 1.0 was about computers connecting to their data and Web 2.0 was about people connecting to their data, Web 3.0 seems set to be about everything connecting to everything.
Blogs, news sites, and CEOs have all predicted and extolled the virtues of the upcoming shift. Smart homes for everyone, better accessibility for disabled people, on-going health monitoring and driverless cars all point towards a world where humans' lives become easier and machines take responsibility.
Away from the hype, however, you can see some very real signs for yourself that the IoT is set to explode in an unprecedented way over the coming years:
First, there will be a rapidly increasing number of start-ups in the sector.
A look at Angel.co — a site advertised as 'where start-ups meet investors' — shows 569 companies listed under "Internet of Things." These companies have attracted 1,466 investors and have an average value of $4.9 million. Read more...
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) commends the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for taking a major step toward broadening the definition of a multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) and thereby providing significant new opportunities for distributed computing industry participants.
The three Democratic Commissioners – Chairman Tom Wheeler, Jessica Rosenworcel, and Mignon Clyburn – are now ready to approve an FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that will extend MVPD classification to online video program distributors (OVPDs) and over-the-top (OTT) Internet protocol television (IPTV) services.
The proposal will clear the way for cloud-based entities that deliver linear programming streams to enter into content licensing agreements under the FCC's program access rules.
Enabling this new category of television programming distribution will increase revenue for all participants in the distribution chain and benefit consumers with a wider range of choices and more attractive prices than are currently available.
The rule was scheduled to be voted on December 10th, but the two Republican Commissioners are still reviewing the item and making edits, as John Eggerton reports in Multichannel News.
A vote is now expected to take place next week – and it’s possible that it will receive a 5-0 vote if the edits are accepted – but in any case the NPRM now has majority support and therefore is assured passing.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said last month that he wanted to create a technology-neutral definition of an MVPD in order to expand IP video competition, and now he is very close to delivering on that promise.
In his blog Tech Transitions, Video, and the Future, the Chairman provided a preview of the NPRM that will accomplish this further advancement of his Open Internet agenda.
The new rule will allow OVPDs and OTT IPTV services to gain must-carry access to broadcast programming and negotiate for cable programming service carriage, provided they pay retransmission and licensing fees.
This will eliminate the requirement of having a facilities-based copper, fiber, or satellite signal transmission system in order to be guaranteed access to TV stations via must-carry rules and retransmission.
OVPDs and OTT service providers will now be able to offer content packages that are competitive with the major incumbent MVPDs – cable and satellite TV operators – without bearing the overhead of maintaining a managed network to deliver such services to consumers.
This has the potential to totally redefine the television programming distribution marketplace, and at the very least start a process for answering the difficult questions that will help determine the future of online video. Share wisely, and take care.
Internet of Things Will Take to the Cloud
Excerpted from IT-Online Report
 International Data Corporation (IDC) made a number of predictions at its IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Internet of Things 2015 Predictions:
IoT and the cloud. Within the next five years, more than 90% of all IoT data will be hosted on service provider platforms as cloud computing reduces the complexity of supporting IoT "Data Blending".
IoT and security. Within two years, 90% of all IT networks will have an IoT-based security breach, although many will be considered "inconveniences." Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) will be forced to adopt new IoT policies.
IoT at the edge. By 2018, 40% of IoT-created data will be stored, processed, analyzed, and acted upon close to, or at the edge, of the network.
IoT and network capacity. Within three years, 50% of IT networks will transition from having excess capacity to handle the additional IoT devices to being network constrained with nearly 10% of sites being overwhelmed.
IoT and non-traditional infrastructure. By 2017, 90% of data center and enterprise systems management will rapidly adopt new business models to manage non-traditional infrastructure and BYOD device categories.
IoT and vertical diversification. Today, over 50% of IoT activity is centered in manufacturing, transportation, smart city, and consumer applications, but within five years all industries will have rolled out IoT initiatives. Read more...
Google Wants to Advance the Internet of Things
Excerpted from VentureBeat Report by Paul Sawers
 As interesting as the Internet of Things (IoT) trend may be, the buzzword has been a bit overused in recent times, often covering a hype-ridden collection of half-baked predictions and musings of where society is heading.
However, the notion that all "things" will eventually be "connected" is becoming a reality, with Internet-enabled thermostats, smoke alarms, and even kettles edging deeper into our everyday lives.
But if the underlying promise of the Internet of things is to reach its potential, the shift will rely on an adherence to open standards, with developers and technologists ensuring their work is open to others to build upon.
With that in mind, Google is setting up an open innovation and research program to formalize and push forward much of the research, standards, security, systems, and more that will feed into this "connected society."
"We plan to bring together a community of academics, Google experts, and potentially other parties to pursue an open and shared mission in this area," said Google, in a post co-penned by famed computer scientist Vint Cerf, who is Chief Internet Evangelist at the Internet giant.
Long before Tim Berners-Lee built the World Wide Web, Cerf was instrumental in laying the foundation of the modern-day Internet. In 1969, one of Cerf's early projects culminated in the first message being sent from computer-to-computer on the ARPANET, a predecessor to the Internet. Read more...
BitTorrent's Project Maelstrom Could Remake the Web
Excerpted from PC World Report
 BitTorrent recently announced Project Maelstrom, a plan to deliver web pages via peer-to-peer (P2P) torrent technology using a special web browser — a drastically different method than the traditional server-to-client system powering most of the web.
Yet BitTorrent's announcement raised more questions than it answered, and we wanted to know what this thing was all about.
After an email exchange with BitTorrent's Communications Chief Christian Averill and Product Manager Rob Velasquez we have some more answers about Project Maelstrom. Does it work with the regular web? What is the Maelstrom browser based on? Will ads work? What about interactive websites? Read on to find out.
Can Maelstrom convert current websites into torrent sites?
No. While Maelstrom can read websites delivered in torrent form, it cannot convert an existing website. "In order for publishers and developers to take advantage of this, they have to publish their content as a torrent," says Averill.
How will Maelstrom deal with hackers tampering with content?
We didn't ask BitTorrent specifically about this, but torrents use cryptographic hashing to verify you are downloading the correct files. Presumably, Maelstrom will verify hashes automatically the way torrent apps do now. Read more...
How Quickly Will the Smart-Home Market Grow?
Excerpted from eMarketer Report
 2015 is set to be the Year of the Internet of Things (IoT), with connected homes one of the hottest topics. According to data released in October 2014 by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Parks Associates, shipments of both smart-home devices and controllers will rise by 20% or more annually in the coming years.
Coming in at 20.7 million this year, US smart-home device shipments were expected to rise 20.3% next year to reach 24.9 million. And by 2017, CEA and Parks estimated that total shipments of devices such as smart thermostats and smart door locks would near 36 million.
Meanwhile, smart-home controller shipments were forecast to increase almost 36% between 2014 and 2015 to near 2 million. Following growth of 31.6% in 2016 and 24.0% in 2017, CEA and Parks projected that total shipments of smart-home controllers would top 3 million in the next three years.
Smart-home service revenues — which include professionally installed control and entertainment systems, interactive security, self-monitoring and control, and other services — should double between 2014 and 2019, according to August 2014 projections from Strategy Analytics.
The research firm estimated that US smart-home revenues of $18 billion this year would double by 2019 to hit $39 billion.
Q2 2014 research by Nielsen found that 40% of US Internet users were interested in owning a connected home. Read more...
Telefonica Delivers Next Gen Online Family Safety
Excerpted from PR Rocket Report
 Telefonica, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world, and Qustodio, the Barcelona based security software vendor, today announced an agreement that will make Qustodio's leading family safety software available to Telefonica customers. The rollout will start in Spain in the coming weeks, with other countries added in due course.
As part of the deal, Telefonica customers will receive preferential access to Qustodio's complete online family safety suite. The innovative, cloud-based service from Qustodio is a cross-platform, next generation solution that works on all popular devices and is currently trusted by more than one million families worldwide. Qustodio provides unique and easy to use tools to help families protect, understand, and manage Internet activity and device usage across all connected devices.
Qustodio's family safety suite includes different apps that allow parents to block harmful content, better control the time their kids spend online, track their child's device or restrict apps on their devices. Through a secure dashboard, parents are able to view and manage the online activity of their children from anywhere with daily, weekly or monthly detailed reports on the time spent online and social media.
"Adding Qustodio to our existing portfolio allows us to offer a full protection suite for kids and teens that goes beyond traditional parental controls and adapts to families' changing needs and requirements in today's multi-device world" said Elisa Caballero, Director of Consumer Marketing at Telefonica. Read more...
From the Internet of Things to the Internet of the Body
Excerpted from TedMed Report by Courtney Paige
 As Managing Director of Healthcare at GE Ventures, Leslie Bottorff invests in healthcare industry startup companies — with a preference for medical technologies and emerging business models. Her 15 years of venture capital investing experience includes her roles as managing director at ONSET Ventures, and investments and board seats at Sadra Medical, which was sold to Boston Scientific; Spinal Concepts, which was sold to Abbott Labs; Neuronetics; Relievant; and VisionCare Ophthalmic.
TedMed: What's the most remarkable innovation you are seeing in health tech or medicine, and what is driving it?
Bottorff: We're seeing tremendous innovation in personal monitoring and in therapies for a wide variety of diseases. Combining therapies, diagnostics and digital communications is creating a more effective systems approach to patient care management. This means helping patients who are in the hospital or coming out of the hospital, living at home with chronic diseases as well as helping people who are not ill, but taking steps towards preventative care.
This is analogous to the emergence of the Industrial Internet, which GE is a major proponent of. This convergence of personal monitoring technology and advanced wireless communication is a pretty big opportunity for what I'll call, the "Internet of the Body". This convergence is going to be the driving force behind the advances we are seeing today.
In addition to personal monitoring, another area of remarkable innovation is noninvasive technologies to treat and diagnose conditions related to the nervous system. We'll be able to take advantage of some of the electronics and connectivity that is now available. Read more...
GE Expands in Internet of Things with SoftBank Deal
Excerpted From Investor's Business Daily Report By James Detar
 General Electric (GE) has named Japanese electronics and telecom giant SoftBank as the first licensee for its Predix software platform for connecting industrial devices.
The move extends GE's presence in the emerging Internet of Things (IoT), which aims to connect industrial gear, electronics and home appliances globally.
GE didn't disclose financial terms but said the deal expands the reach of Predix to new markets and industries and builds on the $1 billion-plus Predictivity services revenue it was already expecting this year.
"The future of the industry is software that connects machines to massive amounts of data quickly and intelligently," Bill Ruh, Vice President of GE Software, said. "GE is taking the first step toward reaching new industries across the world by opening its Predix software platform to SoftBank."
First unveiled in October 2013, Predix provides a standard way for companies to run industrial-scale analytics and connect their machines, data and people. The software is deployed both in machines and in the cloud, where the devices connect and communicate.
The diversified global manufacturer's stock formed a long cup-with-handle base from January to May and tried to break out, rising as high as 27.53 on June 9th before breaking down. It's trading about 7% down from that midyear high, and below both its 50-day and 200-day averages. Read more...
Surprise: Agriculture Is Leading IoT Innovation
Excerpted from VentureBeat Report by Jahangir Mohammed
 Venture capitalists invested a record amount in agriculture and food start-ups in the third quarter this year, totaling $269 million across 41 deals. Conservis, for example, raised $10 million to offer farmers a real-time view of operations. FarmLogs raised $4 million to deliver apps that help farmers increase their productivity and profitability by identifying the crops most likely to sell. In November, Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors and Flextronics Lab IX launched Farm2050, a collective to support "ag-tech" startups whose solutions boost global food production.
Despite great investor interest in agriculture technology, it's a little known fact that farming has been, and continues to be, among the most fertile laboratories for Internet of Things (IoT) innovation and large-scale adoption.
The global food challenge necessitates that farmers find better methods of feeding a population that's expected to grow by 2 billion before 2050. Doing so with IoT makes business sense: it improves operational efficiency, drives productivity, creates new revenue sources and, ultimately, makes sustainability synonymous with profit.
Here are a few ways in which the agriculture industry has emerged as a key testing ground for IoT strategy, and with significant success.
Productivity. The field of precision agriculture, a practice that uses analytics to optimize farming decisions, is a gold mine of opportunities for IoT innovation. Today, it's more critical than ever to maximize yields from every acre of land dedicated to food production. Read more...
Intel Embraces IoT with Plan to Link All Your Devices Together
Excerpted from CS Monitor Report by Jeff Ward-Bailey
 For several years now, chipmaker Intel has been setting its sights beyond computers and tablets to the Internet of Things (IoT) — the networks connecting "smart" versions of everyday appliances such as fridges, thermostats, and watches.
The IoT will let people manage more and more aspects of their daily lives online, from controlling the lighting and heat in their homes to determining when they need to buy groceries.
Intel, whose chips power many of the devices connected to the IoT, formed a special "Internet of Things" division within the company last year, and this week it unveiled a new platform designed to seamlessly link devices and appliances together.
The Intel IoT Platform is designed to be an easy system over which devices can connect with one another and with the Internet, while working to keep that data away from hackers and snoops.
Intel says hardware and software companies will be able to use the platform to create devices that connect to the IoT more easily and securely than they do right now. That way, users will be able to use their devices - including wearables such as smart watches - to control connected appliances in their homes without having to go through a complex setup process, and without exposing device data to others. Read more...
IoT Innovation Takes Flight in the Airline Industry
Excerpted from Microsoft Blog by IoT Industry Team
 With fantastically expensive infrastructure, constantly varying market forces, and millions of dollars at stake, the airline industry is ripe for any innovation that promises a competitive edge.
It's an ideal sector for the Internet of Things (IoT); terabytes of data are gathered on everything from passenger preference to baggage tracking to engine performance. Increasingly, airlines are finding cool new ways to tap into that data to up the ante on passenger comfort while boosting the bottom line.
"Virgin Atlantic is preparing for a significant increase in data as it embraces the IoT, with a new fleet of highly connected planes, each expected to create over half a terabyte of data per flight," writes Shish Shrindhar, who is Microsoft's Director of Business Development for Retail. "Airlines are now actively moving data generated by the IoT to the cloud."
From the silly (the "Happiness Blanket?") to the sublime (predicting and improving the performance of jet engines), Shrindhar brings together some fascinating illustrations of IoT at work in the airline industry in a recent post on his blog.
New airplanes like the Boeing 787 and the Airbus 350 XWB are incredibly connected and generate terabytes of data per flight. Here are some interesting use cases and information about the IoT as it relates to airlines and how it will drive the need to explore data storage beyond data centers. Airlines are now actively moving data generated by the IoT to the cloud. Read more...
Feds Want Flexible Policy to Regulate the Internet of Things
Excerpted from Security InfoWatch Report by Brian Heaton
 The Internet of Things (IoT) needs to be regulated, but the ground rules must not stifle innovation, according to some federal lawmakers.
Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Deb Fischer (R-NB), Brian Schatz (D-HI), and Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (D-WA) all stressed the need for policymakers to take a light but firm hand on how to address the benefits and complex data security and privacy issues associated with machine-to-machine (M2M) communication as connected technology continues to expand worldwide.
The foursome delivered their remarks at the Center for Data Innovation's "How Can Policymakers Help Build the Internet of Things?" event on Thursday, December 4th in Washington, DC. They cited a plethora of statistics noting that more than 37 billion intelligent devices will be online and connected by 2020, and 90 percent of the world's data has been generated just in the last two years.
As a result, the assembled elected leaders presented a united front encouraging education on IoT and the need for immediate policymaking on the topic before it becomes too cumbersome to appropriately regulate.
"First, policymakers can't bury their heads in the sand and pretend this technological revolution isn't happening, only to wake up years down the road and try to micromanage a fast-changing, dynamic industry," Fischer said. "Second, the federal government must also avoid regulation just for the sake of regulation. We need thoughtful, pragmatic responses and narrow solutions to any policy issues that arise." Read more...
Butterflies, Ants, and the Internet of Things
Excerpted from Wired Report by Geoff Webb
 Autonomous cars are one predicted outcome of the Internet of Things (IoT). But no one knows what it will look like tomorrow. One thing is clear, however: How the devices of tomorrow behave will be defined by the identities we give them today.
Buckminster Fuller once wrote, "There is nothing in the caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly." It's true that often our capacity to look at things and truly understand their final form is very limited. Nor can we necessarily predict what happens when many small changes combine — when small pebbles roll down a hillside and turn in a landslide that dams a river and floods a plain.
This is the situation we face now as we try to understand the final form and impact of the Internet of Things (IoT). Countless small, technological pebbles have begun to roll down the hillside from initial implementation to full realization. In this case, the "pebbles" are the billions of sensors, actuators, and smart technologies that are rapidly forming the Internet of Things. And like the caterpillar in Fuller's quote, the final shape of the IoT may look very different from our first guesses.
In whatever the world looks like as the IoT begins to bear full fruit, the experience of our lives will be markedly different. The world around us will not only be aware of our presence, it will know who we are, and it will react to us, often before we are even aware of it. Read more...
Coming Events of Interest
Storage Visions Conference — January 4th-5th in Las Vegas, NV. The fourteenth annual conference theme is: Storage with Intense Network Growth (SWING). Storage Visions Awards presented there cover significant products, services, and companies in many digital storage markets.
International CES — January 6th-9th in Las Vegas, NV. The International CES is the world's gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies. Held in Las Vegas every year, it has served as the proving ground for innovators and breakthrough technologies for more than 40 years — the global stage where next-generation innovations are introduced to the marketplace.
The DCIA's IoT Marathon — January 6th-9th in Las Vegas, NV. Twelve hours of demos, displays, and discussions of all aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT) in daily segments recorded in the DCIA's HD-video webcast studio at the Sands Expo and Conference Center.
State of the Net Conference — January 27th in Washington, DC. With unparalleled opportunities to network and engage on key Internet policy issues, this is the largest Internet policy conference in the US and is recognized for its balanced blend of private and public sector participants.
Datacloud South East Asia — March 25th-26th in Johor, Malaysia. Datacloud South East Asia will assess the energy, scalability, security, architecture, and software challenges confronting operators of data centers and enterprises engaged in or considering transitions to the cloud.
Internet of Things Conference — April 15th-17th in San Diego, CA. The IoT Con will focus on how companies are using a variety of technologies, including ZigBee radios, Wi-Fi, and machine-to-machine (M2M)software, to connect things to the Internet, and how they are achieving real business benefits from doing so.
Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF) — October (2015 Dates TBD) in Dubai, UAE. IoTWF is an exclusive event that brings together the best and brightest thinkers, practitioners, and innovators from business, government, and academia to accelerate the market adoption of the Internet of Things.
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