Internet of Things (IoT)

New collaboration brings global access to Microsoft Azure IoT cloud services via satellite connectivity

Inmarsat, the world leader in global mobile satellite communications services, today announced that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with Microsoft, which will enable Inmarsat’s customers to transfer data collected through their Industrial IoT solutions to the Microsoft Azure IoT Central platform.

Digitalization of supply chain via ICT technology, management, security and more are of expanding interest to all businesses. In a greater sense, the connection of E2E or everything to everything brings ROI innovation to enterprise-to-enterprise connections. From a small retailer who wants less in-store inventory to delivering custom products on-demand to complex automotive, airplane and military projects with millions of parts having a global view of the supply chain provides greater business success. 

While the hype machine appears to have moved on to other topics, Internet of Things (IoT) continues to grow – though not necessarily in the way the magazines predicted. By those predictions by now we should have IoT equipped every electric meter, stoplight, household appliance and probably your dog, too. That’s the sort of letdown we expect when legions of untethered visionaries come into contact with the constraints of the real world.

I was looking for some quick stats to start this article by reminding everybody that the internet traffic is growing at a staggering rate. I came across Cisco’s report The Zettabyte Era: Trends and Analysis, updated last June. However, to understand it you really need to grasp what a zettabyte is, as well as an exabyte and probably a yottabyte.

As I was walking home from breakfast this morning I came across another line of lime green bikes that had been knocked down like a row of dominoes. The wind? Perhaps. An accident? Perhaps. More likely someone out running or walking who was angry about the clutter of rental bikes that have rained on our city since last late last summer.

WebRTC is transforming the communications world. It is being used in Contact Centers, Unified Communications, and a range of applications to provide voice and video directly on the Internet using IP. Analysis has shown there is more WebRTC-based traffic than services like Skype today.  However, WebRTC has the potential of providing much more in how real time is employed in applications and use cases.

Unified Office, Inc. has announced the 2.0 version of its Total Connect Now Operations Performance Suite (TCNOPS 2.0). This suite is an operational performance service based on the Internet of Things (IoT), and can now monitor and analyze IoT data while allowing users to automatically or dynamically control the devices they’re connected to.

While the UCC suppliers continue to hope that 2018 will be the year that users finally embrace their vision of collaboration and willingly adopt their preferred collaboration tools, the bigger IT market is gearing up for a real change. The change I’m referring to is the Internet of Things (IoT) that will have the potential to impact everyone’s daily lives in countless ways and not just accelerate daytime pursuits of knowledge workers.

Along with seeing UCStrategies colleagues in person, the recent GENBAND/SONUS Perspectives 17 event in Los Angeles provided a rare chance to take the communications sector’s collective temperature. In addition to insightful demos and sessions, the opportunity to spend quality time with executives from the hosts, their partners and leading customers is unfortunately becoming less frequent as every aspect of our industry goes through roiling changes whose pace inexorably quickens. 

Indeed, in terms of the temperature, it is rising.