(TechRadar Excerpt)

Interconnected devices set to alter our perceptions of reality
by Tamsin Oxford, TechRadar

Try to imagine a world where everything is interconnected. A world where you can modify your own reality to see what you want to see, where your coffee machine knows when you need your next fix, and the high streets are populated with characters from your favourite PC games.

This future is not some distant dream as imagined by fans of Minority Report. Much of this technology is already here, and the current rate of development has futurists claiming that this will be a reality within the next five to ten years.

According to a recent report by Amdocs, experts are predicting that there will be seven trillion networked devices by 2017. Add to this the fact that Moore’s Law remains a constant, chips have become both smaller and more affordable, and that technology is developing at an unprecedented rate, and you have all the ingredients necessary for an explosion in M2M implementations across the globe.

Communication service providers are moving towards Tera-play, evolving to accommodate a complex ecosystem that’s fast and intelligent, and constantly changing to meet market demand and innovation. Tera-play providers will do more than just connect billions of people to one another – they will be a part of M2M, ensuring that communications between trillions of devices is seamless and organic.

World-changing

The Internet of Things encompasses far more than just machines talking to one another; it has the potential to completely change the world in which we live and how we perceive reality. However, while this connected world can offer remarkable advantages to humanity there are also risks. Today many of these solutions are being used to police people and communities, a step towards the chilling society created by George Orwell’s 1984, and, as machines become increasingly autonomous and intelligent, some are concerned that Skynet may not be a fantasy after all…

So, what exactly is the Internet of Things (IoT)? Council, an Internet of Things think tank, defines it as “… a world where everything can be both analogue and digitally approached – that reformulates our relationship with objects – as well as the objects themselves. Any object that carries an RFID tag relates not only to you, but also to other objects, relations or values in a database. In this world you are no longer alone, anywhere.”

The IoT is comprised of smart objects that can be interacted with remotely and those that can respond to remote interactions, or can work autonomously to deliver services and solutions without human intervention. Nicolas Nova, a researcher at the Media and Design Lab at the Swiss Institute of Technology and founding member of Council, concludes, “To put it simply, the Internet of Things is when your everyday objects are recognisable and get intelligence thanks to the fact that they can communicate information about themselves and access information that has been aggregated by other things. Think about alarm clocks that go off early because they know there is a traffic problem, to medicine containers that tell you when you’ve forgotten to take your pills.”

Whether you want to describe this technology as the Internet of Things, as Machine to Machine communication, or Tera-play, this evolution in technology and data, connectivity and communication, has enormous potential.

Driving forces

IoT is now experiencing a major growth spurt and this has come about thanks to several factors – IPv6, 4G, cost, and available technology are among them.

Gary Atkinson, director of embedded marketing at ARM says, “There have been bespoke devices that can gather data and transmit it over a network but they have been up to 40 dollars each, and this meant it was a massive undertaking and investment. Now we are already seeing ARM-based 32-bit microcontrollers in the sub-one dollar space, even as far down as 50 cents a chip. And when you are putting that amount of capability into a chip you can do all sorts of things with it.”

In the second quarter of 2010 AT&T and Verizon announced that non-human objects – interconnected devices – came online
in greater numbers than human subscribers. The Internet of Things is here, penetrating society quietly and efficiently.

“Many of the promises have been fulfilled,” explains Dr Graeme Codrington, expert on the new world of work, Tomorrow Today UK, “Every square foot of the planet is now connected and you can be located in what is, effectively, a digital map of the earth’s surface. We have so quickly taken satnavs for granted that we forget what a revolution it has been to know exactly where you are, where you want to go, and to be able to navigate through – and around – physical objects. It is remarkable but accepted as normal. The same fate awaits most IoT innovations.”

Article continues at source:
TechRadar

Freescale – Connecting the Next 50 billion

Event Date
Friday, 15 June 2012 09:00 – 13:00 (GMT)

Event summary

Connecting people is only the beginning – the next big opportunity is connecting devices. M2M, the Internet of Things & remote services will be the key to the next 50 billion connections. Silicon South West has got together with Freescale to put on this exciting networking seminar which looks at some of the real world market opportunities that companies are exploiting today and looking to develop in the future.

Speakers from companies including:

Followed by lunch and networking

Location

Bath Ventures Innovation Centre
Broad Quay
Bath
BA1 1UD
United Kingdom

Charity Cycle Slam tracked by Arkessa

Arkessa, a BusinessWeekly ‘Killer50′ most wanted technology company and thought-leading enabler of M2M services is providing crucial connectivity for the tracking of cyclists as they participate in the highly anticipated Cycle Slam charity event.

Arkessa’s acclaimed wireless connectivity will be tracking each cyclist as they make the scenic and arduous journey across Europe.

The event led by England rugby International, Lion and World Cup winner Lawrence Dallaglio and cricketing hero Andrew Flintoff spans an extraordinary 2872km from the site of the ancient Olympic games in Greece to the host city of this year’s Olympics, London.

In the spirit of the event and as a proud Value In Kind partner of the Cycle Slam event, Arkessa’s own Operations Director, Philip Chaplin will be representing Arkessa in the event . Phillip will be breaking a sweat for a good cause as he takes on the formidable second stage of the event cycling through the bustling seaport of Bari north up through the rustic valleys of Northern Italy.

Thanks to Arkessa connectivity, well-wishers and supporters can track the cyclists live – in real time – as they cycle their way through the five stages of the slam.

Arkessa is proud to be a Value in Kind Partner of the Dallaglio Flintoff 2012 Cycle Slam.

Further information about the event can be found here:
http://www.dallaglioflintoff2012.com/

Transcript

I’m Paul Green, I’m the technology and marketing director for Arkessa, we’ve been in the M2M space for quite a number of years, in fact 10 years and particularly in the last two since Arkessa was formed. We’ve been providing communication systems into organisations to manage, monitor and control remote equipment.

A simple application for this kind of service would be monitoring pieces of transport infrastructure. Quite often it’s possible for pieces of the infrastructure to be damaged by poor driving – think of a canal bridge or level crossing gate for example – the infrastructure provider often has no clue which vehicle has damaged their equipment. Simply by being able to drop in a service into these remote locations they can pick up simple information which tells them that ‘this gate’ or ‘this bridge’ has been damaged and here’s the numberplate. This enables them to recover cash that they’d never have previously got to.

Another example is actually improving the ability to offer and monitor your own services. A lot of companies have equipment all over the place. We’re working with a company which provides oil into airports throughout Europe. They’ve got to deliver clean, quality oil to the aircraft. They’ve got filters on those sites and hey need to make sure those filters remain clean. So the cost to them to send someone to keep checking [those filters] every week was quite substantial. Being able to monitor that remotely is fantastic for them – this enables them to offer a quality of service and a guarantee to their customers they would never have previously been able to do otherwise.

We needed someone who understood what we were about and we needed a partner that understood what we were about so that we were delivering what our customers required. We did quite a bit of searching around and we looked at quite a number of hosting companies and none of them could deliver the solution. Mainly because they could provide us with the space but they didn’t have that professional services support or even the ability to keep us up-to-date with the technology.
Telehouse and KDDI were beginning to build these cloud services supported by professional facilities and professional expertise and engineering support – and so they seemed to us very early on to be the natural partner for us to work with.

What’s good for us is because we’ve come up with new, creative, innovative ideas we need some people to explore these with who can work out how to implement them in a way that’s secure, reliable and robust. We couldn’t do that on our own. The great thing with Telehouse and KDDI is that we can come and discuss these ideas – we can work out practical means of implementing them and as a result we’ve got creative solutions which match the needs of many of our customers coming into play over the next year which nobody else has ever delivered in the remote communications space.

We as a small business needed to focus on those creative, innovative ways of delivering M2M services which met the customers needs of our customers. The infrastructure that needs to sit on is substantial and as a small growing business we wanted to put our money, time, effort and [work force] into the relationship with the customer. What we really couldn’t afford to do is to build the infrastructure and support services to go with that in a scale what met the needs of the seriously large corporates which we work with. [For this reason] Telehouse complimented us perfectly because they are a credible, blue-chip company which enabled us to work with credible, blue-chip customers.

Source: Telehouse / KDDI (Youtube)

Discover more about Arkessa’s services →

The event, titled, ‘Ethics and the Internet of Things – an Oxymoron?’ questions the emergence of ethical ambiguity around machine-to-machine (M2M) communication as it transforms the devices in the world around us into a ubiquitous Internet of Things.

Drawing upon years of expertise as a pioneer in the field, Paul will share Arkessa’s experiences implementing M2M connectivity for devices across a plethora of industries including: healthcare, retail, transport, energy and infrastructure.

The question about data collection, data ownership and data retention remain hot topics of debate within the IT community. The potential for privacy concerns in contrast with the benefits smart services bring, makes M2M and the Internet of Things (IoT) an increasingly poignant area for discussion. Commercial and domestic implementations of these technologies will be explored, alongside examples of current and future possibilities.

Paul will be speaking alongside: Sarah Darby deputy programme leader of the Lower Carbon Futures research team at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. Her research centres on how technologies are adopted and adapted by users, and on the development of smart metering and smart grids.
Also speaking is Robin Duke-Woolley CEO of Beecham Research. Beecham Research is a authoritative technology market research, analysis and consulting focused on the M2M and connected devices market.

For further information about the event : Visit the BCS event site › ›

- Jay Bedeau
jaybedeau@arkessa.com

Telecoms professionals from all over the nation and as far as the United States, assembled to celebrate the approaching launch of the Science Museum’s exciting new telecommunications area due in 2014. Further marking the occasion, was the launch of the all-new book ‘Making Telecoms Work’ by Geoff Varrall.

Halam Rose, Senior Engineer of Arkessa and Jay Bedeau Arkessa’s Marketing Executive were in attendance at the exclusive event. Together they provided insight into the role of M2M and it’s place in the world of telecommunications and telemetry.

The evening kicked off with an inspiring speech from Ian Blatchford and Geoff Varrall on the importance of the Science Museum as hub for fresh ideas and predicting the trends of the future. His speech was well received and was the precursor to an evening of networking, nibbles and refreshments – including fantastic 25 year vintage Scottish malt whiskey (for the brave and bold).

The evening saw a melting pot of academics, operators, investors, analysts, manufacturers and developers share ideas and visions in a relaxed yet awe-inspiring setting within the members lounge.

Halam Rose, Arkessa | Right: Geoff Varrall, author ‘Making Telecoms Work’

Arkessa thanks Geoff Varrall, the Science Museum and Wiley publishing for their kind invitation to the event.

Making Telecoms Work is available from Wiley publishing and is approved by the Science Museum.

- Jay Bedeau, Arkessa

Seem familiar?

Today my train was delayed due to a fault at a level crossing before I heard the announcement I already knew the reason. The following true account is from one of our customers and is the perfect example of why I should not have been delayed today.

A railway operator was losing money to reckless car drivers. Drivers were speeding through barriers at level crossings clipping the barrier and damaging it in the process. As one would expect, there is a constant need for a functional barrier at railway crossings as they are imperative for safety. For the railway operator, frequently replacing the barrier was very expensive and incredibly inconvenient for both them and the general public. The operator simply accepted the damages to the barriers as a nuisance and was left with little choice but to bear the brunt of costs and replace the barrier in order to maintain safety at their crossings. However, with no deterrent for reckless drivers, driver behaviour would never change. The costs of constant repairs would inevitably cripple their cash-flow, preventing necessary spend on other vital parts of the rail network. The operator needed a solution to their problem. Stationing an attendant to observe the barriers at each crossing would involve hugely expensive labour costs and a larger administrative workload. Desperate for a smarter solution, the railway operator was keen to share their distress.

After exploring their concerns, sharing thoughts and discussing experiences, together we started to investigate how M2M could solve their problem.

Behind their problem were various hidden challenges and obstacles. The solution had to be easy to install able to exist anywhere across the country from the city suburbs to deep within the countryside (easily install the device with its own address wherever required). Robustness and resilience were also two highly important factors (always being in range of a mobile network to send/receive data) as the device would need to stay outside exposed to the weather. Most important of all, the railway operator needed to obtain clear and comprehensive information about what was going on at these crossings each time they were being damaged, why they were being damaged and who was responsible (an easy way of making sense of whatever the device is doing).

Arkessa enabled the railway operator to install a CCTV solution across their railway barriers. The company was able to use their CCTV to identify reckless drivers and pursue them accordingly – directly or through the courts.

How the solution works

The ability to capture reckless driver’s number plates, created a means to charge drivers for damages to their barriers – reclaiming much of the money lost through repairs. Even better for the operator the potential for legal action against drivers enabled by the presence of functional CCTV cameras proved to be the perfect deterrent for reckless driver behaviour.

I should not have been delayed today

 The remainder of this article will be published at the end of this month.

For more information about the solutions in this article contact us: info@arkessa.com | +44 (0)845 33 11 668 | www.arkessa.com

There were several points of particular interest, particularly how to effectively communicate the benefits of V2X to justify the risk and cost for the public sector. With M2M connectivity at the heart of the these technologies, this is in turn a necessary concern for us. For every country infrastructure technology is hugely important. However, given the sheer age and scale of infrastructure projects, the costs and change create fear amongst public sector representatives. In this time of economic uncertainty, the public sector is noticably hesitant to invest in such changes.

This point was elaborated upon by a representative from the Department of Transport who stressed that the argument for V2X should be public-sector orientated (Department of Transport) more than it is consumer-orientated. They ultimately need concrete answers to justify their ROI in the short and long-term. Where does the extra value come from? What are the additional revenue streams? How will this improve public safety and simplify maintenance? Answers to all these questions are essential.
At Arkessa we have already provided the answers to many of these questions through other applications of M2M so we felt compelled to suggest answers. Extra human value is derived from increased road safety which V2X was quoted as reducing crashes by up to 85%. Thus in turn provides extra monetary value for the public purse by fewer accidents, leading to better traffic conditions and thus a more productive economy. Huge monetary value can be gained by selling constantly-updated information on driver profiles to the private sector and additional benefits include ease of traffic management with vehicles informing the infrastructure of conditions.

Nevertheless, V2X is an exciting sector and for the industry it was pleasing to witness all the players discuss the way forward.

Though session was short but very insightful, Arkessa thanks Telematics Update for the webinar and gathering the key individuals involved in the process of making V2X work effectively.

- Jay Bedeau

Feel free to share your comments on twitter: @arkessa

Owing to our beliefs in the robustness and reliability of our connectivity services, Arkessa was a connectivity provider in the trial. The early findings show a simply incontestable argument for the adoption of telehealth and telecare.

“The early indications show that if used correctly, telehealth can deliver:

• 15% reduction in A&E visits,
• 20% reduction in emergency admissions
• 14% reduction in elective admissions,
• 14% reduction in bed days
• 8% reduction in tariff costs.

More strikingly they also demonstrate a 45% reduction in mortality rates”

– Department for Health (Whole System Demonstrator Findings Report, Dec. 2011)

 

In this study, known as the Whole System Demonstrator Programme, almost 49% of the patients were sufferers of either heart failure, diabetes and COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease).

Data was collected on an ongoing basis under the following categories: service utilisation, participant reported outcomes (such as quality of life, cost effectiveness, experience with the change) and the barriers to adoption.

While the cost reduction element of these results makes business sense, the increased peace of mind of doctors and families which the reduction in mortality rates brings is priceless. These results are a benevolent argument for the advancement of the sector, this is expressed succinctly in the report:

“To make decisions people need information and care services that respond to their needs, not the other way round. We want to make sure that people have access to services and information that help them make their own decisions and one way of doing this would be to enable people to get real time data on their own health status in real time.

That is what assistive technology such as telehealth and telecare can do.”

– Department for Health (Whole System Demonstrators Findings Report, Dec. 2011)

 

Arkessa will continue to work hard enabling M2M within healthcare and we would like to express our sincerest thanks to our partners in the health sector for conducting this trial.

The full report can be found here: http://bit.ly/sRRjY2

This article is written for those unclear about the world of M2M and what it can do for their business.

This is a funny old world we live in. We live in a soup of interconnectivity: everything is connecting with everything else; people with people; people with machines and machines with machines.

During breakfast – breakfast is when I gather my daily harvest of M2M news – I sipped my industrial-strength coffee and a thought suddenly occurred to me. With all these machine-to-machine connections how do you really know what’s going on? The question seems simple enough but the reality is far from it.

To explain the point more clearly, imagine your devices out there in the field as being a class of school children and you are the teacher. While you’re around everything is (relatively) normal but as we all can recall, as soon as the teacher turns their back on the class, all manner of chaos breaks loose: one child is swinging from the ceiling fan, another is drawing all over the desk and another child is having a kip. In short, there are children who aren’t working silently and diligently as they’re supposed to. These children, once again, are just like connections to your devices.

So, with billions of internet connected devices out there on good old planet Earth the question ‘how do you really know what’s going on?’ should be a pressing one for anyone wishing to benefit from M2M. Any successful business wants to keep their costs low, profits high and conduct themselvessuper-efficiently but to do that properly they can’t just ‘deploy and forget’ devices. Just like naughty children, you don’t know what’s going on when nobody is watching.

Transport, healthcare, environment, security, energy and more; all these industries rely increasingly on M2M. Faulty connections and erroneous data can be reduced with proper management. Failing to do so can jeopardise a business’ reputation, profitability and even endanger lives. Emport is our new solution to this problem. Quite simply, Emport acts as teacher’s pet in this case, enabling you to monitor and manage your connections across your entire estate of devices and check any device’s internet connection is working by pinging the device.

The uses for this are far-reaching but here’s a simple example: if the connection to your train timetables goes faulty on Friday, by looking at Emport, you’ll know it’s not working on Friday enabling you to send out the engineer that same day. Everyone wants reliable trains.

If you haven’t already you should have a look at the latest promotional video for Emport, hopefully you’ll see why I feel it changes everything.