The Potential of IoT Virtualization in Factory Automation

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Industrial manufacturers are conservative by nature. The value of their equipment and potential liability mean they generally won’t adopt new technology without it being a proven use case first.

So, while AI and the IoT will revolutionize IoT factory automation, many enabling technologies needed for industrial digital transformation must still make it from the drawing board into working proofs of concept (PoCs). This starts at the foundation of AIoT system architectures, where ideas like workload consolidation have yet to be successfully demonstrated at scale in real-world factories.

In fact, many automation professionals might still be unfamiliar with workload consolidation and why it’s important for achieving their smart-factory objectives. Simply stated, the term describes a way of virtualizing multicore processors. As a result, manufacturers can eliminate entire redundant systems, reduce total energy consumption, minimize latency, and lower costs.

This may seem simple, but it’s not. One reason workload consolidation hasn’t been sufficiently proven in automation use cases is that graphics processors leveraged in AIoT workloads like image processing and deep learning aren’t easily virtualized. Really, they can’t be virtualized at all without advanced features like the interface virtualization and I/O sharing designed into 12th gen Intel® Core™ processors (formerly “Alder Lake”).

These technologies are already being demonstrated in real-world industrial PoCs. But to fully appreciate them we must understand why they are required in the first place.

While #AI and the #IoT will revolutionize IoT #factory automation, many enabling technologies needed for industrial #DigitalTransformation must still make it from the drawing board into working proofs of concepts. @dfi_embedded via @insightdottech

Virtual Graphics Are on the Outside Looking In

Although IoT virtualization isn’t new, some workloads are still easier to virtualize than others. Developers have struggled when attempting to virtualize graphics hardware because GPUs are usually host processor peripherals. And as specialized peripherals, GPUs can be exported from a host processor to another virtual machine (VM) but simply don’t have the features to natively support virtualization on their own.

In other words, GPU resources aren’t easily shareable across multiple VMs.

A developer could go to extreme lengths by emulating a virtual GPU that acts as an intermediary between the drivers and a physical GPU, but techniques like this add so much latency that most edge applications won’t tolerate it.

Helping Virtual GPUs Realize Their Full Potential

For workload consolidation and AIoT technologies to reach critical mass in the industrial sector, hardware-accelerated GPU virtualization is required. Fortunately for IoT factory automation professionals, virtual GPU performance improvement is one of many enhancements in 12th gen Intel Core processors.

Instead of addressing the problem with exotic architectures or more graphics execution units than an edge system could possibly use, these processors tackle it in the I/O that connects GPU peripherals. They do so by adding support for a PCI-SIG specification called Single-Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) to Intel® Graphics Virtualization Technology (Intel® GVT), which gives VMs access to the physical functions of a GPU’s PCI Express port.

This makes one GPU that can itself be distributed across a workload-consolidated system at near-native performance levels. Simply put, it implements resource sharing directly in hardware rather than entirely in software.

12th gen Intel Core processors are the first to support both the Intel® Xe GPU architecture and SR-IOV virtualization features. And the global supplier of high-performance computing technology DFI, Inc. provides the ADS310-R680E, a microATX board, which is the first platform to equip GFX SR-IOV functionality. It also supports up to four external displays, Intel® OpenVINO™ Toolkit deep learning, and the Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM).

A Proof Point for Industrial Workload Consolidation

For industrial automation equipment to make a seamless transition to AIoT it must add capabilities without sacrificing determinism. Optimizations like SR-IOV make this possible by allowing engineers to capitalize on the flexibility of modern software technology while still delivering native hardware performance, whether programs are executed on a physical host or virtually.

The ADS310 was recently part of a joint SR-IOV PoC with Intel, which demonstrated how graphics virtualization would perform in an industrial automation technology stack. In it, OpenVINO AI algorithms run in an Ubuntu container and analyze camera images, which are passed to a local monitor over HDMI. The same data is also fed into two Windows 10 OSs, partitioned by a KVM hypervisor, and then relayed to remote displays via Wi-Fi and HDBaseT Ethernet.

Without SR-IOV installed, the two Windows 10 instances achieved a 28 fps frame rate. With SR-IOV the VM frame rate jumped to a 60 fps frame rate, a common target for smooth graphics rendering.

The efficiency, productivity, ease of use, and cost benefits of moving to workload consolidated system architectures are both obvious and well documented. And now, thanks to the integrated capabilities of 12th gen Intel Core processors, they are also proven in the real world.

Automation industry, prepare to be transformed.

 

This article was edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Retail Digital Signage Gets an Upgrade with Computer Vision

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

You would think that over the past two years, with the rush to e-commerce, brick-and-mortar would be on the decline. But it is quite the opposite.

“It’s a complete myth that brick-and-mortar is dying. Retail has not been impacted negatively by COVID at all. Grocery, convenience, and home improvement stores are up between 120-160% year over year, and that’s during the pandemic,” says Jay Hutton, Co-Founder and CEO of VSBLTY, a digital display solutions provider.

Hutton entered the digital-signage space with an eye on where industry leaders failed to evolve or innovate. “We felt that the technology underpinning digital displays had advanced to the point the next iteration was possible, but none of the major players had taken that step,” he explains.

He took that step with VSBLTY. By using computer vision and advanced object recognition technology, the company was able to develop a solution that could see and act in real time.

“If you’re doing digital display, the most important part about the performance of that display is who’s seeing it. When they look, are they paying attention?” Hutton says. “It gets enormously more impact once you’re able to use and correlate what’s happening from an audience perspective. And once it’s measured, it can be packaged up and monetized.”

Physical Retail Versus E-Commerce

While online shopping offered more convenience and safety in the early days of the pandemic, that didn’t stop consumers’ desire to shop in stores. For instance, most shoppers want to be able to go and pick out their own produce and not rely on the delivery services to do so.

What e-commerce has done over the past couple of years is change the experience shoppers expect from their products and stores. Many retailers and brands turned to digital-signage solutions to offer that extra digital interaction, but it’s still not serving their needs.

Most retailers have the advantage of engaging and interacting with customers at the point of sale, but they lack the visibility into customer behaviors and journeys that e-commerce offers.

“What if we could do that and more in retail? What if we could measure the audience so intimately and in such a granular way that you could deliver a superior level of analytics than the internet,” Hutton says. “You can more directly target messaging. You can deliver and laser-focus the narrative. There’s enormous value to doing that.”

Digital Signage for Brands and Retailers

VSBLTY recently signed a deal with Mexico’s Grupo Modelo, which is part of the brewing group Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), to build a digital-signage network over four years. The network will comprise screen and camera technology in up to 50,000 stores across Latin America. The goal is to develop a closer relationship with customers, increase brand loyalty and sales, and accurately measure results.

As part of the initiative, VSBLTY will work with Intel® and Retailigent Media, a leading smart-retail solution and analytic provider in Latin America.

VSBLTY will provide its proprietary software, licensing for analytics, and visual display powered by Intel® NUCs. And Intel vPro® provides the secure, central management required in a digital display network of this scope. Together, the companies will offer more details into store traffic, customer anonymous demographics, daily sales, and critical operations-related data.

“What if we could measure the audience so intimately and in such a granular way that you could deliver a superior level of #analytics than the internet?” –Jay Hutton, Co-Founder and. CEO @vsbltyco via @insightdottech

The effort is already underway in Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru, with the goal of achieving a network of 5,000 locations in its first year.

According to Hutton, AB InBev is unique in that it is both a brand and a retail company. “As a brand, they want a closer relationship with their customer. And they want to deliver valuable impressions to those customers,” he explains. “On the store side, it’s monetizing real estate and learning more about customer behavior. It’s another media channel, but it happens to be higher value because it’s delivering impressions right at the moment of truth. Right where the action is happening. Right where you can influence shoppers.”

Bringing Awareness to Retail Digital Signage

The VSBLTY platform can detect whether a customer is enticed, engaged, and interacting with a digital display in real time as well as measure their movements. The platform ingests third-party data from mobile devices to identify shopping patterns throughout the store.

This gives brands and retailers immediate insight into their marketing efforts, enabling them to make changes on the fly. All the data collected is PII (Personally Identifiable Information) compliant, and they can then use that information to redirect or change the display content based on who is looking at it.

“It’s changing the landscape of what’s meaningful to a brand and changing their marketing strategies,” says Hutton.

The Intel® OpenVINO™ Toolkit, a computer vision library, helps make these real-time analytics possible. “We perform best with an Intel engine because we can process much faster. It’s more efficient from a cost standpoint, and it’s also more accurate,” says Hutton.

In the future, Hutton sees computer vision in retail advancing to the point that it could even improve inventory management. For instance, retailers and brands can now know immediately if their shelf is getting low and needs to be replenished, instead of waiting for the nightly audit. There is also an opportunity to address planogram compliance and ensure products are displayed in their proper place.

“Computer vision is not risk. It’s not a question anymore. And it’s happening right now,” says Hutton. “We’re always thinking about ways that the technology can be leveraged to achieve other outcomes that are valuable and create new opportunities in retail.”

 

This article was edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Build the Edge-Cloud Continuum with Intel® Xeon® D

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) applications are demanding more data center-class performance closer to the edge. The simplest solution would be adding network processors to ruggedized servers. But looking deeper into the rack, you quickly find the feature requirements of operational endpoints are far different from the core network.

Emerging edge use cases need high-performance computing (HPC) solutions that aren’t quite embedded, but not quite for the data center, either. They also require software experts versed in enterprise and real-time technology who can optimize these hybrid platforms to the deployment at hand.

But these don’t have to be custom solutions. I talked with Michel Chabroux, Senior Director of Product Management at Wind River, a leader in software for intelligent connected systems. We discuss how the deterministic, virtualization-enabled feature set of new high-performance Intel® Xeon® D processors, formerly known as Ice Lake-D, are enabling next-generation microservers that span the edge-cloud continuum.

What comes to mind when you hear the term “microserver”?

For me, a microserver is a box that behaves like a server for a subsystem of a potentially much larger system. This would be a highly specialized piece of equipment for an environment that is not traditional IT, where servers are neatly placed on air-conditioned racks.

If you think of an industrial or factory installation, it could be an environment where you have a lot of dust, vibration, or where limited space is available. It’s also not always necessarily connected, or the connection may be sporadic. The setting is going to be very different from traditional IT and the functions are also going to be different.

This seems like a gray area because there are embedded processors with industrial functionality and network processors for enterprise and data center markets. Are microservers stretching the limits of what’s available?

The services that microservers provide are not emails or web searches or business logic from an IT environment. The applications that run on some of these edge servers are background logic for connecting multiple embedded devices. Others are highly compute-intensive, so customers are looking for the best performance on the market today. And to be frank, that is Intel®. No one provides the same compute-per-dollar.

As Wind River has worked with Intel® in the recent past, we have seen two different types of processors. Our customers want hyper-powerful, top-of-the-line processors with the maximum number of cores for their equipment, but don’t want the systems to generate too much heat. So, you have to compromise somewhere.

But with the Intel Xeon D processors, it provides hardware quite well-suited for that gray area. It is really very good at doing compute. Intel has expertise doing it in IT and has managed to transfer some of that into lower-power profiles adapted to being closer to the intelligent industrial edge.

The processor parts are divided into low core count (LCC) and high core count (HCC) devices. Core counts on some of the HCC devices are quite high, and from a software point of view this enables us to provide a platform for mixed-criticality applications where you can run multiple operating systems at the same time by sharing the hardware leveraging Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT-x) and Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (Intel® VT-d). Wind River software solutions take advantage of these Intel technologies.

Now you can get one box and put, say, four operating systems in it, each one doing its own thing.

“The #compute power on these #processors is fantastic, which is extremely appealing for the #avionics markets where there are data processing-intensive applications such as radar or mission computers.” —Michel Chabroux @WindRiver via @insightdottech

Are there any specific features that make this new generation of processors a form, fit, and function match for edge microserver applications and deployments?

There are a few things of interest to the markets Wind River serves.

The first is Intel® Time-Coordinated Computing (Intel® TCC) and support for Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), which is very specific to industrial applications where network timing is key. Alongside this is single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) functionality that allows the end user to share a network card between multiple operating systems—without having to deal with paravirtualization or other software techniques.

The other thing is that some SKUs are certifiable to the DO-254 avionics standard. The aerospace market is highly interested in IntelXeon D processors, and Wind River had early pre-silicon conversations about using these processors with Wind River Studio’s operating platforms: VxWorks, Wind River Helix™ Virtualization Platform, and Wind River Linux. Again, the reason is that the compute power on these processors is fantastic, which is extremely appealing for the avionics markets where there are data processing-intensive applications such as radar or mission computers.

There’s significant oomph in these parts that makes running multiple payloads at the same time very doable and very appealing. And because of virtualization, we can now tell these customers: “Whatever you’ve done on Linux, you can manage it side by side with real-time flight or other safety-critical aspects of the system, but your Linux remains your Linux.”

By leveraging Intel processors and Wind River software offerings such as VxWorks® and Wind River Linux, you can take a large portion of what you’ve done and reuse it almost as is.

You mentioned support for Intel® TCC, TSN, and other deterministic connectivity. Will these present a learning curve for enterprise developers? And will virtualization have one in the other direction?

Yes, there is a learning curve.

The standards for TSN are broad. There is very wide range of standards, and all of them require very fine configuration. It’s non-trivial to configure the OS layer, stacks, drivers, and hardware. And then you need to configure your entire system. And by system, I mean different boxes, because all of the participants in a network must be TSN-aware.

Virtualization brings more complexity initially, but once it’s done, that complexity becomes invisible to the end user if the system is set up properly. If the operating systems and virtualization software are done well, you can bring in your IT team and your embedded team and they can meet in the middle, for example, by doing AI processing closer to the industrial edge.

At Wind River, we’re trying to minimize that learning curve by enabling both ends of the engineering spectrum—traditional IT and traditional embedded—to leverage platforms using the same kinds of tools, processes, etc. And because Intel processors are so compatible with one another, we can leverage enhancements across multiple segments from Intel Atom® to Intel® Core™ to Intel® Xeon®.

One of the first TSN-enabled NICs was the Intel® Ethernet Controller i225, and we supported that with our real-time operating platforms. Fast-forward to today, we also support it on the Intel Xeon D processors.

Intel hardware was also the first on which Wind River had true hardware virtualization support, starting with VT-x, then VT-d, and now SR-IOV and Intel® Graphics Virtualization Technology (Intel® GVT) in the future. These enhancements to the CPUs make our own, and our customers’ lives, easier.

The hyperconverged-infrastructure concept has been around for years but seems to be becoming fundamental to modern technology stacks. Now that it is, how will the edge evolve?

You’ll have this end-to-end continuum that starts with IT business logic in the cloud, and as you get closer and closer to the edge, you’ll still have this cloud infrastructure backing you up. But as opposed to being in a system, then a gateway, then behind the gateway, those lines between the edge and the cloud will be fluid and smooth within your device or equipment.

You’ll have an entire ecosystem, and you’ll use the same paradigm, the same thought processes, and the same tooling across the entire continuum.

 

This article was edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Content Director for insight.tech.

Now Boarding: The Future of Smart Railways

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Here in the US, when we think of British trains it might be the Hogwarts Express that first comes to mind, or any other antique-looking steamer out of Masterpiece Theatre. But the real, modern National Rail carries millions of passengers and millions of tons of freight every day in the UK, and has real, modern challenges to tackle, both COVID-related—such as decreased ridership and social distancing in stations—and non-COVID-related—like improving passenger experience and working towards a Net Zero carbon agenda.

Reaching those goals, and finding solutions to those challenges takes serious collaboration, like that between Simon Atterwell, Managing Director of Network Rail Telecom (NRT), and Gregory Butler, Industry Lead for Rail at Cisco for the UK. They’ll discuss how the UK rail industry is changing in response to the pandemic, the rail technologies that make those changes possible, and the partnerships that bring it all together. North American carriers should take note of the smart-railway innovations our UK cousins are modeling. There may even be benefits that extend beyond the station platform.

What are some areas of change you see in the rail industry right now?

Simon Atterwell: From a change point of view, it’s largely in response to the pandemic, which has decimated the UK railway and the industry. But we recognize that this is an opportunity to make the railway much more data-driven and much more digitized—to fundamentally reshape the experience for passengers. It’s about modernizing per our passengers’ needs and recognizing that we need to respond to a slightly different passenger demographic as well. And we really need to ratchet up the level of innovation and partnership with industry in order to deliver the solutions that will make us much more data-driven.

Of course, it’s also about making sure that we have the right digital tools to make the stations, the platforms, and the whole rail environment much more safe and secure. These are things like face-mask detection, passenger-movement controls, monitoring and managing queues, and many other rail use cases that can be enhanced through the use of digital technology.

From Cisco’s perspective, how is technology addressing all these new demands?

Greg Butler: To encourage passengers to come back to rail as a mode of transport, and to deliver a better passenger experience, there’s a whole set of digital services that need to be created, developed, and implemented in a manner we’ve never seen before, and at a speed we’ve never seen before. And we’ve been incredibly successful so far in a lot of the work that we’ve been doing with, for example, face-mask detection. But, of course, those same technologies and solutions that use visual-center analytics can actually deliver other use cases—to help crowds with social distancing, for instance. But also, for non-COVID use cases, such as abandoned luggage or suspicious packages, potential trespass or antisocial behavior or vandalism.

One of the pieces of work that we did early in the pandemic with Simon and his team was in Marsden, in West Yorkshire; it’s a fairly small, innocuous station. There was an impending disaster around care homes, and in particular care homes in rural communities with poor connectivity and less-than-average service. We tapped into government-owned fiber that ran past Marsden and gave us a 10-gig link. And then using third-party radios, we were able to beam out from a station mast into and around the community of Marsden for a 1-gig link. And that was the connectivity piece.

The connectivity then enabled the National Health Service to deploy a telehealth pod, which meant that they could not just do remote consultations, but actually remote testing and diagnosis as well. And, of course, from a COVID perspective the benefits of that are obvious. But there were also benefits beyond COVID. On top of that connectivity, we started to do things like deploy cameras into Marsden station; we started to do smart analytics.

Partners like Intel™ have been incredibly supportive of these initiatives. Working with Intel, working with some of our more homegrown talent, we’ve been able to create services with capabilities that drive better outcomes for passengers, but also for local communities like Marsden.

How can partners unlock new smart-railway possibilities?

Simon Atterwell: If you look at railway and some of the use cases that we’re trying to address there, it’s things like safety, crime, and security. And that’s very much about deploying and exploiting smart camera technology alongside visual analytics.

We can then look at how we plan and design our station environments. I think technology can really help, by understanding passenger movement, to build the plans that improve the passenger experience—whether that’s retail or whether it’s about passenger information, or whether it’s about understanding where trains may be less busy. There are all sorts of ways to join up technology to really deliver key data and outcomes for our passengers and people who are using the rail environment.

In addition, we—ourselves, Cisco, Intel, and other solution vendors—have an opportunity to really help drive a revised digital economy. Our network reaches parts of the UK that other networks don’t reach, because where every piece of track goes—bearing in mind that’s to most towns, villages, and cities in the UK—our network, both fixed and wireless, follows. There are lots of areas in the UK where there are “not-spots,” or places where there isn’t mobile coverage. And our assets and infrastructure can either act as a platform or an enabler for mobile network operators to roll out their wireless networks, or indeed to augment the wireless network that I run and operate as well.

“This is an opportunity to make the #railway much more data-driven and much more #digitized—to fundamentally reshape the experience for passengers.” – Simon Atterwell, Managing Director, @networkrail via @insightdottech

So whether it’s fixed connectivity into homes, businesses, and local communities adjacent to the railway, or even greater ambitions, I think we are perfectly poised to have a positive impact on the UK economy by making it a much more digital place to live and to work in. And of course that’s hugely relevant during these unprecedented times.

But when you extrapolate the thinking slightly further, there’s the ability to really assist with multimodal and autonomous transport, and integrated transport networks. There is lots of synergy and opportunity to leverage investment, but also technology and coverage. I see what we’re building and collaborating on today to be a real enabler for a better, more integrated digital economy, what I call “UK PLC.”

What is the importance of smart-railway collaboration?

Greg Butler: We’re taking a very different approach to how new problems can be resolved these days. And a lot of that is Cisco working with organizations that we maybe haven’t worked with before, or even organizations that in the past might have been considered competitors for Cisco. A perfect example of that is a program called the Train and Station Innovation for Performance—TSIP.

TSIP is a joint investment between Network Rail Telecom, Cisco, Intel, and some other partners, where we have identified something like 140 use cases requiring a solution. We’re building out a test track in Melton Mowbray called RIDC—the Rail and Innovation Development Centre. RIDC is about 26 miles of track where they do a lot of testing for trains, and we’re building out a connectivity platform there that will support this use case development.

We have traditional partners there, like Intel; we have traditional civil partners; global organizations like Siemens; also a UK-based organization called Telent. We’re also working with Purple Transformation Group—PTG—a company that has been looking at these use cases situations from the problem down, rather than from the technology up. One use case example: How do we reduce carbon in the rail corridor? There are plenty of things here we’re focused on that existed before COVID, and that will exist long after COVID.

PTG has helped us identify what the key carbon contributors are, to map the use cases that we’re focused on and the impact those use cases have on carbon emissions. Now all of a sudden we can actually start to target carbon emissions in a proper manner. But the tooling that they have created for us is also around the tracking of the benefits.

If we are enabling Network Rail to monitor track for, say, overgrowth of trees that are starting to hit trains—using cameras and smart analytics or even sensors—that reduces the need and the cost and the carbon emissions associated with tree maintenance.

How is technology playing a role in NRT’s carbon-neutral goals?

Simon Atterwell: We’re looking at a number of things in the way that we build and introduce new technology that will enable us to vigorously test all the use cases that can contribute towards environmental and sustainability outcomes. Video and then analytics on the top of trains is one example that Greg mentioned. It enables us to understand the amount of vegetation growth, and thus the incursion on the railway, which could also show how a wireless signal that we use for rail emergency calls might be impeded. So not only is it contributing to an environmental-planning outcome, but it’s also contributing to safety of the railway.

We’ve got a mixture of stuff. Everything from solar- and wind-based backup technology that provides standby capability for batteries—all the way through to sensor-based technology that allows us to design in environmental and sustainability solutions as outcomes.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Greg Butler: Part of our remit for TSIP—the Train Station Innovation for Performance program—is that we use it as a showcase locally here in the UK, but it’s not just an industry-bespoke showcase. It’s for other industries as well, be they industrial-type industries like oil, mining, and gas, or other sectors like finance and retail. Network Rail and Network Rail Telecom are quite rightly proud of what they’re doing there with us, and with the likes of Intel and PTG and others, and this is something we want to showcase on a global scale.

Now that’s obviously in Cisco’s and Intel’s interests, because it helps showcase what we’re doing here in the UK and its applicability beyond the UK. But I think it’s also important to show success, and to be a model where we have been able to react and evolve very quickly to meet this new set of circumstances with solutions that are sustainable even beyond the pandemic. It’s very much something that we want to invite Intel customers, partners, friends, as well as others, to come and have a look at to see if it’s something they’re interested in trialing or developing with us, or actually deploying themselves. So things are very much open for business.

Related Content

To learn more about advancements in rail technology, listen to Cisco and NRT Take Smart Railways Beyond the Station. For the latest innovations from Cisco and NRT, follow them on Twitter at @Cisco and @NetworkRail, and on LinkedIn at Cisco and Network-Rail.

 

This article was edited by Erin Noble, copy editor.

On-Premises or Off-, Custom Servers Are the Engine for SMBs

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

No matter what size or what type of business you are in, the ability to store and access data is incredibly important to the success of your operations. But if you are a small- to medium-size business (SMB), you probably don’t have the IT team or budget to properly build and manage a storage solution that can handle all your data demands.

Several essential software and applications help make a business run. Most businesses deal with at least email, payroll, and project management software, and they need a solution that can not only properly store all their files and data but have enough power and memory to support their growing needs. As a result, on-premises servers have become an essential element of business operations—especially for companies that, for one reason or another, do not want to move entirely to the public cloud.

“Even for small-scale companies or small offices, everyone needs a reliable server that runs 24/7. But it is often difficult to even know where to start. And without an available IT staff, it’s impossible to decide what the right server or technology is going to be best for you,” says László Fésüs, General Manager at Real.Com-94 Informatikai Kft – Szerver.Hu, an on-premises server and data storage provider.

The issue is that there are no one-size-fits-all data storage for businesses. Most businesses require a customized solution. And choosing the wrong piece of hardware or components can result in poor performance, unsecure data, inability to scale, inability to access data, and wasted effort.

Then there’s constant innovation coming from server providers, making it even more challenging to ensure businesses make the right investment.

Build vs. Buy On-Premises Data Storage

Because businesses need a data storage solution built specifically for their needs, there’s a misconception that it has to be a server built in-house. But on top of limited budgets and lack of expertise, businesses just don’t have the time to take on such a complex task.

“You need to understand the technology and its compatibility very well. It may look straightforward, but there are a lot of hidden traps in the assembly process. You need to be up to speed with the latest technology almost day-to-day to know the new standards and capability of the latest server component generations,” Fésüs says.

That’s why Szerver.Hu works to take the pressure off businesses and provide the necessary support and expertise. It works with customers from start to finish to build an optimal, high-performing, and reliable on-premises data storage.

Szerver.Hu takes advantage of technologies such as @Azure Stack #HCI to offer #data storage solutions with #HybridCloud capabilities as well as backup, recovery, security, and monitoring features. via @insightdottech

Szerver.Hu first does an intake on what the customer is looking for, the types of applications or services they are running, and their data demands. If the company sees a disconnect between what the customer is asking and the configuration, it will work to balance the components, CPU, and hardware elements for the business.

“Based on our own experience, we can advise on the right configuration for the upcoming needs and future performance improvement,” Fésüs says.

For SMBs that don’t have the resources to install the server themselves, Szerver.Hu will work with customers on putting the hardware together, configuring it, setting it up, and doing basic network connection. If any upgrades need to be made, the company will make sure components are compatible with the overall system and performance is not compromised.

A Hybrid Cloud Data Storage Strategy

Some businesses decide to go all in on the cloud to bypass the complexity and expense of building custom servers. But Fésüs notes that not everything can live in the cloud.

Businesses may have data that can’t be made publicly available due to legal regulations such as GDPR or have private, sensitive health data they need to keep secure. Additionally, many SMBs have old legacy applications and hardware that they can’t upgrade and need to continue to run locally.

In these instances, a hybrid cloud strategy is key. “Hybrid is the way to go because you can keep your data right next to you in your own data center or in a private cloud, and it can be connected to the cloud so you can still take advantage of the scalability and other benefits the cloud offers,” Fésüs says.

Szerver.Hu takes advantage of technologies such as Microsoft Azure Stack HCI to offer data storage solutions with hybrid cloud capabilities as well as backup, recovery, security, and monitoring features.

The company’s servers also use the latest Intel® Xeon® CPUs and Intel® Optane™ technology to enable persistent memory and rapid access to data. And because the company works directly with Intel®, it can provide data storage at a much lower price point than traditional brand-name solutions, Fésüs explains.

“Building a server out of Intel components is going to be as reliable as any name brand-name server like Dell or HP. Intel provides us the same value-added services, updates to firmware and remote controller units, and ability to upgrade—giving businesses the freedom to build something that fits their exact needs and budgets,” he says.

Trying to upgrade brand-name servers can also cause a roadblock to business operations because typically a business would need to stay within the same brand to change components. And with today’s supply chain issues and global chip storage, it could take months to get those updates made.

With a company like Szerver.Hu, SMBs can get the latest enterprise-grade components faster with the technology service and support they need to succeed in today’s digital and data-intensive market.

 

This article was edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Transforming the Playing Field: Event Experiences Go Digital

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

This is not your grandfather’s ball game. Or concert, or state fair, for that matter. And it’s not just the pandemic that’s changed the way we think about attending big in-person events. Technology transformation has the power to do away with the lost ticket, the flat beer, the endless line for the bathroom (dare we hope?).

But it turns out that the road to the show must be paved with fiber-optic cable first. Joe Costanzo, CTO of global technology-solutions company PMY Group, takes us through it. He discusses the process for transforming physical and system architectures for sporting organizations, major events, and venues. He also addresses privacy concerns and talks about how event technology is transforming venues to provide audiences safe, fulfilling, and immersive event experiences.

How has the pandemic encouraged your customers to evolve?

The stadium-market landscape has evolved pretty dramatically over the past 10 years—really as a result of significant advancements in technology. But the COVID pandemic has accelerated the rate of adoption. Health and safety concerns that can be leveraged through technology are a starting point to focusing on technology. There’s a baseline consumer expectation right now around ensuring a safe and secure event.

A lot of things that we’re seeing around crowd intelligence, around smart and connected stadiums—pre-pandemic that was mostly conversation. Then a lot of venues and event owners started focusing on technology because they didn’t know what it was going to be like when the crowds came back, and they felt technology would help.

What strategies and technologies are your customers looking for right now?

We’re seeing technology focused around four pillars. The first is a need to create and maintain a digital connection with fans, and to develop a comprehensive understanding of the audience based on data insights. The second pillar is the enhancement of the fan experience via multiple digital touchpoints, such as interactive content and immersive experiences like AR and VR—which could also be used to engage the fan who isn’t there on-site.

And even before the pandemic there was this third pillar around safety and security and having a user-friendly event—seamless actions like frictionless entry for operations both inside and outside the venue. When you’re inside that includes being able to get food and beverage and have it delivered to your seat, or order from your seat and go pick it up. Or it could be understanding what the quickest route is to get to the restroom, get your beer and hot dog, and get back to the seat so you don’t miss any of the event.

The fourth pillar is using this technology to increase revenue and profitability. It’s not enough to just get back to pre-pandemic levels of revenue, because people have lost years of revenue stream. So they ask: “How can I use technology to increase profitability? How can I build positive commercial outcomes—whether it’s via partnerships, commercial, or just opportunities for me to transact more seamlessly with my fans?”

How do you talk to your customers about using technology to enable those four pillars?

The way to make technology transformation easily consumable for our venue owners and operators is to break it down into four key areas: connectivity; immersive-experience technologies; data and analytics (which encompasses AI); and then safety, security, and operational tech.

When we say “connectivity,” I think the first thing that comes to most people’s mind is wireless—Wi-Fi, 5G, small cell—but it’s really around core infrastructure. It’s not the sexiest thing to talk about, but even in new builds we see the most failure around not having enough power, enough fiber-optic, enough cabling. And it can be as simple as, “We need it up on the ceiling because that’s where our LED displays are going to be, but it was only put in down on the ground.”

Whenever we talk about technology and technology transformation, we really encourage our customers and venue owners to focus on that core infrastructure, that connectivity component. Because if you get that right, it’s really the foundation of your house. You can do a lot of building on top of that.

How are you moving toward edge computing with Intel®?

We look at edge in two different ways. We look at it truly on the edge—right there with a chip set inside that data-capture device that could be a CCTV camera or an IoT sensor. But there’s also another aspect of the edge that we refer to as the on-prem or on-premises edge, where everything isn’t necessarily going out to the cloud. We’ve been working really closely with Intel® on those two aspects of the edge.

One of the things that has emerged through the partnership with Intel® is the use of platforms like OpenVINO™ that allow us to do our computational modeling right within the chip set. That way we don’t have to move massive amounts of video up to the cloud; we can do it on-prem. In some instances, we can do it right on the edge in a smart camera. So we get rid of the privacy concerns.

I think, pre-pandemic, people were very leery around computer vision–based technologies because of privacy concerns. When we talk about AI, there is the perception that it can be misused, misappropriated. But I think COVID helped everybody understand that there are aspects of AI that can be utilized around safety of operations if you use the technology right, if you use the data right.

Technology can help us add seamlessness to an experience. And when it’s seamless, people are more accepting of it, because they don’t see it happening. When the technology creates friction is when we see problems.

How does a venue or event owner achieve this seamlessness?

We talk about a five-phase approach toward the delivery of a technology transformation. First and foremost, there has to be a strategy—and it has to involve all the business units and business objectives—laying out your technology vision and commercial strategy and valuation. And then, sometimes right up-front in that process, you have to look at the investment in funding. The technology isn’t necessarily expensive, but it’s also not cheap.

Once you’re aligned from a strategy perspective, then you really focus on design. You have to map that back to the objectives and to the vision. Then you have a solid foundation to go out into the procurement phase, where you can put briefs and RFPs and specifications and the tender evaluation, negotiating the contracting, and then commercial partners.

“Whenever we talk about #TechnologyTransformation, we really encourage our customers and #venue owners to focus on that core infrastructure, that #connectivity component.” – Joe Costanzo, CTO, PMY Group via @insightdottech

And then you go into the implementation and delivery phase—installation, integration, commissioning, and handover. And then you’re onto management operations. But if you don’t get those first three areas right—strategy, design, and supporting procurement—that’s probably where a lot of transformation projects and technology projects are going to fail.

Can you give an example of a successful project?

We had a partner in Australia that runs a big event that’s like a state fair in the U.S. Previously, they had always used a manual process for managing revenue sharing with the concessions. Then they were able to launch a technology platform around crowd management, people counting, and occupancy, so when it came time to have that revenue-share conversation with the concessionaires, it was pretty black-and-white. As event owners, they were able to say, “We know that there were this many people, not just through the gates, but in this area and this area. We know how the food courts were utilized. So, from our perspective, the revenue share needs to be this.”

And it wasn’t that the concessionaires were trying to be underhanded; but they were just using eyeballs and point-of-sale receipts to get an understanding of what was going on. So using data, using metrics around the crowd intelligence and crowd movement and dwell times—that can change the revenue outcome.

How do you integrate existing technology with the new overlays?

We’ve created our own smart operating platform that takes into account all the things that events and venues have to go through—whether it’s input from our design team, our advisory team, our delivery teams—we’ve tried to incorporate all that. In most instances, this means a data-fusion layer. Having a data-fusion engine allows us to connect to other data assets—whether that’s ticketing, whether that’s point of sale—and then to quickly deploy computational models on top of that data.

That’s not to say there aren’t instances of gaps in the data-collection capabilities where we have to bring hardware into play. But we want to limit that, and to establish ROI through connecting those different data systems. I think what’s critical is having the ability to acquire data from a lot of different systems, and having the ability to place software and technology to leverage existing systems. It’s a big challenge, but it’s one of the things that we’ve been able to do pretty easily with the Intel® team.

What are the expected KPIs in terms of deploying these kinds of systems?

We break up data into three buckets within a venue or an event environment. There’s crowd intelligence, which sits on the bottom and provides a foundation layer. Then there’s operational intelligence—whether it’s the concessions, or security teams, or that type of thing. A beer vendor is a good example, and they might ask: “What type of cost savings are available to me by monitoring the operations?” The answer is that it could be as simple as placing IoT sensors within the draft lines to ensure that the beer is at an optimal temperature. Because if it is, you’ll get less foam and you’ll get more pours per keg. We talk about bridging the physical and the digital: Technology doesn’t just reside in the IT department anymore.

Last, there’s the commercial intelligence, and that can be: “How many new versus returning visitors do we see? How many people have the opportunity to see the activation compared to the number of people through the door? How many people engaged with the activation, and how many people returned?” When you bridge the physical and digital worlds, you can understand better what’s going on with them, which is an output of the technology, which allows you to communicate better with your asset owners.

It gives you the data you need to understand what’s going on, and allows you to be proactive. More than just the KPIs, what you’re trying to do is get to a point where you’re consolidating and analyzing data, because that leads to revenue uplift and cost savings.

Related Content

To learn more about transforming event experiences, listen to Using Event Technology for the Win with PMY Group and read AI Innovations Are a Winner for Tennis. For the latest innovations from PMY Group, follow them on LinkedIn at PMYGroup.

 

This article was edited by Erin Noble, copy editor.

AI Self-Checkout Redefines Food Service Efficiency

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Lunch hour is often an unappetizing adrenaline rush for food service operators.

A large crush of customers arrives for a meal at the same time. Everyone is hungry. Everyone is rushed, demanding prompt service. Customers want to grab and go and not waste precious break minutes in long lines. Traditionally, cafeteria managers simply threw more resources at the problem.

But the rules have changed. And food service operators cannot afford to dish out the same old formula in this new landscape. Luckily, there is a new player in the food service space: AI self-checkout systems.

The Smart Retail Challenge

“There is a severe shortage of workers,” says Sergii Khomenko, Co-Founder of Autocanteen, a provider of AI-driven self-checkout solutions. “And the rise of hybrid work has led to unpredictable foot traffic. Food service operators are left guessing as to how many customers will show up—when. Amid such uncertainties, staffing five registers all afternoon might be overkill.”

The Autocanteen Self Service solution helps operators solve these challenges by delivering speedy AI-powered checkout solutions. A customer brings a tray of food—for example, a tuna sandwich, an apple, and a glass of lemonade—to the register and pays for it in seconds. Computer vision identifies each item, and a scale helps estimate costs for food sold by weight, like salads.

Each transaction takes about 10 seconds on average. Faster checkout leads to time saved and more revenue. One employee can supervise many stations at a time, leading to decreased labor costs as well.

@autocanteen expands on barcode solutions, enabling #SelfCheckOut where labeling isn’t possible. via @insightdottech

Vision AI Replaces Barcodes

Self-checkout lanes are not necessarily a new concept, especially in retail stores, and have proven efficient in most supermarkets. But they have traditionally leaned on barcode scanners and customers having to search for the right products from a screen at the checkout kiosks. Autocanteen expands on barcode solutions, enabling self-checkout where labeling isn’t possible.

“Using computer vision and machine learning, Autocanteen has a 97% accuracy rate, and we’re working toward moving it to 99%,” Khomenko says.

“Barcodes are efficient for self-checkout and customers are familiar with them, but they are difficult to implement for environments such as canteens. Plated foods on trays do not lend themselves to barcodes,” Khomenko says. “It might be easy to slap a label onto a takeout sandwich box, but getting one on a plate of lasagna is not so elegant.”

A simpler solution is for the point-of-sale system to recognize a standard serving of lasagna and charge the customer accordingly (Video 1).

Video 1. Autocanteen uses camera sensors and AI to optimize self-service. (Source: Autocanteen)

AI Self-Checkout Increases Efficiencies and Lowers Costs

Autocanteen automation drives machine learning algorithms. Operators train the models to recognize the products the food service station sells through a combination of computer vision and image recognition.

Because the training models live on, and are accessed through, the shared cloud, operators do not have to train every register to recognize what’s on the tray. One station covers all. As the program learns, that new data routes to the cloud, and in turn, channels to every checkout terminal.

In addition to saving money on the customer end of things, operators can harvest efficiencies at the back end. Centralizing all product information and scanning sold products through one program allows food service operators to slice and dice the data. They can find out which dishes are more popular and adjust inventory and orders accordingly. Pictures of the food being sold can also serve as data points for quality control.

Intel® technology is fundamental to making these capabilities a reality. “Among other great Intel products, we use the Intel® OpenVINO™ Toolkit to boost our deep-learning performance,” Khomenko says. “We can boldly confirm that this is the best solution in its class.”

AI Checkout Solutions Serve Many Markets Across the Retail Industry

In the two years since its launch, Autocanteen has seen use in a variety of environments: schools, universities, office canteens, and micro-markets. “Our solution is modular and both software and hardware can be configured to fit well into most environments,” Khomenko says. “Smaller cafeterias and mini-markets benefit from a standalone terminal while large-footfall canteens will see self-checkout sections, similar to supermarkets.”

The COVID-19 pandemic might have accelerated the adoption of contactless checkout solutions like Autocanteen, but we were already headed there. Services such as Amazon Go have demonstrated how sensors and computer vision can dramatically reshape the checkout experience.

“The future of food service checkout is frictionless and touchless,” Khomenko says, “Our key differentiator is that we make this frictionless technology affordable to smaller players and for a wider market.”

And that is good news all food service operators can savor.

 

This article was edited by Leila Escandar, Editorial Strategist for insight.tech.

This article was originally published on March 22, 2022.

Immerse Yourself in Smart Digital Signage

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Brick and mortar is ready for its comeback. Online shopping may be convenient, but the experience can never transcend a 2D world. Today’s physical retailers can enjoy the best of both worlds by adding advanced digital signage that engages all the senses and transforms the buying journey.

Imagine customers walking into an athletic wear store, for example, where they are greeted with dynamic videos of people using the gear in action. Not only can they see how the pieces enhance performance; they can pick them up and try them on for themselves. Or consider the benefits interactive digital signage can provide Quick Serve Restaurants (QSRs). Customers can be drawn in by walls of screens that advertise menu options and then make their selection based on a greater spectrum of information.

“Digital signage adds tremendous value and makes sitting-on-the-sofa online shopping boring,” says Nils Karsten, Retail Business Segment Lead for Sharp NEC Display Solutions in Europe, manufacturers of digital display solutions. “It has the ability to create real experiences for people.”

Applications go beyond retail as digital displays are becoming an essential tool for a variety of industries, including transportation. For example, an airport in Germany recently installed a NEC Digital Signage solution above the baggage area in one of its terminals that sees 25 million passengers coming through each year. In this case, a custom-made 16-by-9-foot screen leverages the system’s high brightness and contrast technology, creating an eye-catching display. Retailers, restaurants, airlines, and travelers all benefit from information that helps avoid potential bottlenecks to advertising that can generate additional revenue.

Flexible, Preconfigured Hardware and Software

NEC Computing Device Digital Signage uses an Intel® Smart Display Module (Intel® SDM) that is integrated directly into signage displays, offering higher edge compute performance for improved flexibility. “No extra cable, connection, or power supply is required,” says Karsten. “And we support most of the world’s leading CMS (content management system) solutions, which makes it easier to get started.”

Plus, you can easily integrate a broad variety of sensors, for applications such as people counting, RFID, wireless, object detection, and touch buttons.

The solution comes preconfigured with software for easy deployment. “Hardware is the basis of the digital-signage experience and as CPUs get more powerful, there are many different iterations that create a good basis for new software to be developed,” says Erik Elbert, Senior Product Manager of Large Format Displays and Computing Technologies for Sharp NEC Display Solutions in Europe.

And these displays offer 4K resolution that will soon expand to 8K. “If someone is standing in front of the screen watching the content, it looks as real as possible because you don’t see any pixels,” says Elbert. “That gives the person the experience of being part of the content.”

#Retailers, restaurants, #airlines, and travelers all benefit from information that helps avoid potential bottlenecks to #advertising that can generate additional revenue. @NEC_corp via @insightdottech

Digital-Signage Displays Make the Viewer Part of the Content

While visual content is engaging, today’s signage is more than just a pretty display. The integration of augmented realities and computer vision using AI can enhance the customer interaction and create sophisticated applications and use cases for greater flexibility and performance.

“You want to have the best, brightest picture possible for the display side, but you also want the best playback of the content,” says Elbert. “In the background, you can do data analysis to measure who is standing in front of it and what kind of content should be played to gain more attention from customers.”

Systems integrators can leverage digital-signage solutions to grow their businesses while helping their clients stay relevant in the marketplace. SIs benefit from a preconfigured computing setup, so they don’t need to worry about loading software, which OS version to use, or system configuration. And NEC’s global sales team can assist with deployment as well as with add-on services, such as repairs and extended warranties.

The solution can also be customized with different operating systems, memory, and settings to meet requirements, such as high data security needed for airports. “Once connected to the network, there is nothing else for them to do,” says Elbert. “Customization starts at the minimum order quantity of one piece in EMEA region. We want to offer the best modular technology to our service integrators so with the right software and sensors, our computing devices give them the possibility to win more customers.”

The Future of Digital-Signage Systems

According to Karsten, the digital-signage market is growing rapidly at a rate of 7% a year. And technology is making the latest and greatest possible. Innovation of digital signage will include interactive capabilities through the continued integration of sensors, cameras, and AI, for an intelligent, immersive experience.

“Integration and experience are the two main assets,” says Karsten. “We’re moving away from a simple display in a store. Better resolutions, different screen sizes and the integration of sensors, object recognition, and even mobile devices create a truly immersive and seamless environment. As people get back outside and shop, digital signage can make the experience even better than it was before COVID.”

This article was edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Cisco and NRT Take Smart Railways Beyond the Station

Posted on by Micah Kaplan
Gregory Butler & Simon Atterwell

[Podcast Player]

Compared to the automotive and aviation industries, railways can seem rather antiquated. But trains are actually vitally important for modern digital infrastructure.

Rail systems can provide high-speed Internet connectivity to rural areas. They can help cut carbon emissions. And they can provide a surprising array of services to local communities.

Take the Marsden train station in West Yorkshire as an example. When an impending disaster was expected to hit this area, companies like Cisco and Network Rail Telecom (NRT) teamed up to leverage government-owned fiber running through the station and third-party radios to provide communications and connectivity to the community. The UK National Health Service was then able to set up telehealth pods for remote consultations, testing, and diagnosis. And that’s only one way rail technology is used for the greater good.

In this podcast, we examine all opportunities that rail technology offers, smart rail benefits for both employees and passengers, and ongoing collaborations to improve rail operations and management.

Our Guest: Cisco

Our guests this episode are Gregory Butler, Industry Lead for Rail for the global technology company Cisco, and Simon Atterwell, Managing Director of NRT. Together, Greg and Simon are working to deliver a next-generation telecommunications rail network in the UK.

Greg has more than 25 years of experience in IT sales and business leadership roles. At Cisco, he focuses on the entire rail industry from consulting and sales to delivery and operations.

At Network Rail Telecom, Simon and his team focus on enabling an operationally safe railway through end-to-end management, maintenance, and support of wireless telecommunications.

Podcast Topics

Gregory and Simon answer our questions about:

  • (2:31) Biggest transformations in the rail industry
  • (4:44) How technology can meet new demands
  • (7:51) Importance of agile development and collaboration
  • (9:53) Rail technology benefits for both passengers and staff
  • (13:07) Smart rail possibilities from working with partners
  • (22:51) Using rail technology to reach carbon-neutral goals
  • (25:14) What global peers can learn from NRT and Cisco

Related Content

For the latest innovations from Cisco and NRT, follow them on Twitter at @Cisco and @NetworkRail, and on LinkedIn at Cisco and Network-Rail.

 

This podcast was edited by Christina Cardoza, Associate Content Director for insight.tech.

 

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Transcript

Kenton Williston: Welcome to the IoT Chat, where we explore the trends that matter for consultants, systems integrators, and enterprises. I’m Kenton Williston, the Editor-in-Chief of insight.tech. Every episode, we talk to a leading expert about the latest developments in the Internet of Things.

Today I’m talking about the way smart railways benefit communities. From providing high-speed Internet connectivity to cutting carbon emissions, trains are doing a lot more than just delivering people and goods. Here to talk about this is Greg Butler from Cisco and Simon Atterwell from Network Rail Telecom.

So, Greg, I really appreciate you joining us today.

Greg Butler: You’re very welcome.

Kenton Williston: And Simon, likewise, welcome to the show.

Simon Atterwell:  Thank you, Kenton.

Kenton Williston: So I’ll start back with you Greg. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself and your role?

Greg Butler: My name is Greg Butler. I am the industry lead for Rail at Cisco for the UK What that actually means is my team is responsible for the entire rail industry and we cover everything from consulting, sales, through to delivery and operate.

Kenton Williston: Fabulous. Looking forward to getting into more of what that means in practice. So Simon, how about you? Can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and your role and what Network Rail does?

Simon Atterwell: Absolutely. I’m Simon Atterwell, I’m the Managing Director of Network Rail Telecom, and together with my highly capable team, I’m responsible and accountable for all of the operational effectiveness of the critical National Telecoms Infrastructure that forms part of a safe system for rail emergency call communications, operational voice, power, control systems, track worker safety, train movement, corporate connectivity, and many other things as well. Ultimately this is all about providing the fixed and wireless national infrastructure that supports delivering millions of passengers home safe every day, together with millions of tons of freight to its destination every day. And that helps both in terms of passenger movement, but also by getting cars off the road. It also helps with establishing credentials for achieving our Net Zero carbon agenda and targets.

Kenton Williston: Got it. I think this is a great chance for me to ask you then Simon, what are some of the biggest areas in which you see the rail industry changing at the moment?

Simon Atterwell: From a change point of view, it’s largely in response to the pandemic, which has decimated the UK railway and the industry. Our ridership and our revenues are significantly and dramatically reduced. But in saying that, we recognize that actually the opportunity is to make the railway a much more data-driven railway and a much more digitized railway, to actually fundamentally reshape the experience for passengers. So I think ultimately it’s about evolving a modernizing per our passengers’ needs, because we recognize that working habits are changing, and we need to respond to a slightly different passenger demographic. We really need to focus in and ratchet up the level of innovation and partnerships with industry in order to accelerate the testing of new technology, and also to deliver solutions that really make us much more of a data-driven railway. So digital rail corridor and data-driven railway are the two key changes we need to make. So passenger experience becomes supremely important.

And coupled with that, in terms of making an environment that is attractive to our passengers and safe for our staff, it’s about making sure that we have the right digital tools and capabilities to make the stations, the platforms, and the whole rail environment much more safe and secure. And examples of that would include things like face-mask detection, passenger-movement controls, looking at monitoring and managing queues, and many other rail use cases that can be enhanced through the use of digital technology.

Kenton Williston: So that is quite the laundry list. Greg, there’s a lot of challenges in there from Cisco’s perspective, I’m sure, on how to actually enable all these things and bring them to fruition. What are the ways that you are pushing technology forward to meet all these new demands?

Greg Butler: The world has changed for us as an organization as well, you know? There was a very quick shift from office workers to home workers for a lot of organizations, in particular Network Rail, and all of a sudden things that we hadn’t even dreamed of that would be what has become the norm. It was very clear in the early days when Simon’s and my teams all sat down together that we had to focus on a whole set of use cases, which we maybe wouldn’t normally take responsibility for before. We had to very quickly leverage our capabilities and might to support our customers, particularly customers that enact critical national infrastructure like rail. Simon and I have been very focused on not only encouraging passengers to come back to the rail as a mode of transport, but also to deliver a better passenger experience.

And to do that there’s a whole wider set of digital services that need to be created and developed and implemented in a manner that we’ve never seen before, and in the speed that we’ve never seen before. We’ve been incredibly successful so far in a lot of the work that we’ve been doing with Network Rail Telecom, identifying and now already deploying solutions that can do things like Simon said. For example, face-mask detection. And you know what? Six months ago, I think we all hoped that that was something that might go away, but it doesn’t feel like, to me, it’s going to go away any time soon. But of course those same technologies and solutions can actually deliver other use cases that use visual-center analytics to help crowds social distancing, but also non-COVID-related use cases such as abandoned luggage or suspicious packages, potential trespass or antisocial behavior or vandalism. And also be able to inform not just passengers, but also employees as well.

Kenton Williston: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that I’m hearing here that’s really intriguing to me, and something that I’m seeing broadly across all industries, all market segments really, is how important it is for all sorts of players in these spaces to work together. So you have the service providers like a Network Rail, you’ve got the technology providers like Cisco, you’ve got the foundational technology companies like Intel.

And this is as good a juncture as any for me to mention that the insight.tech program and this podcast are Intel productions. The technologies that are in play here are so complex and needing such rapid innovation, including in sectors that traditionally when you think of rail, a lot of people think of as sort of an old fashioned technology, something, especially here in the States, people picture UK rail as being Harry Potter with steam engines, but that’s not really accurate. But nonetheless it is still an “older technology” that is rapidly adopting I think a lot of new practices, and I’m seeing that same sort of trend everywhere across transportation. Public transit, whether it’s freight, passenger, rail, buses, everything, that there’s just—because of everything that’s been happening with the pandemic especially—just has been an urgent need for agile development of new technologies. And I think the only way we were going to get there is for this kind of collaboration you’ve been outlining to be really the driving force behind that. Nobody can really do it by themselves.

Simon Atterwell: We’ve had to respond in a very agile way in order to accommodate large swaths of our workforce now working from home. And therefore that’s meant a lot of collaboration, not just with industry, but also inside Network Rail. That learning from the pandemic, if we take any positive away from it, is about the holy trinity. And when I say holy trinity, I mean the need to work closely with our colleagues inside rail and also outside rail to really leverage and exploit the technology capability and expertise that’s available to better serve our colleagues across Network Rail, of which there’s about 40,000, as well as our passengers of which I’ve mentioned many millions alongside our freight customers. So yeah, it’s very much about collaboration Kenton.

Kenton Williston: Yeah. I think another thing that really comes to the surface in everything that I’m hearing is how these benefits are multifaceted in the sense that there’s benefits to the UK government, there’s benefits to Network Rail, there’s benefits to the passengers, there’s benefits to the staff. This is really a multifaceted set of challenges, but also opportunities that we’re talking about here. Greg, you did touch on this briefly. I’d love to hear a little bit more how you see some of these technological advances in particular improving the lives of the human beings who are actually on the trains in the stations. Tell me a little bit more about how you see technology benefiting staff and passengers in the rail industry.

Greg Butler: It’s probably useful just to go back to the previous point around collaboration. And it is really when you see the caliber of people around you when you have a crisis. And the pandemic, I think firmly sits in the category of crisis. And one of the pieces of work that we did early in the pandemic with Simon and his team was in West Yorkshire, in Marsden. We recognized there was going to be—there was an impending disaster around care homes, and in particular care homes in rural communities that have poor connectivity and less-than-average service. We actually went out to a fairly small, innocuous station in West Yorkshire, a place called Marsden, and we worked together with Simon and his team to tap into government-owned fiber that ran past Marsden and gave us a 10-gig link. And then using third-party radios, we were then able to beam out from a station mast into and around the community of Marsden. And that was a 1-gig link.

Now obviously there’s the connectivity piece, but the connectivity then enabled working with the National Health Service. We deployed effectively a telehealth pod, which meant that you could actually not just do remote consultations, but actually do remote testing and diagnosis as well. And of course, from a COVID perspective, the benefits of that are obvious. But of course longer term it’s a sustainable solution using Network Rail or government assets, using highways lamp posts to attach radios to light up these rural communities. But of course, the benefits beyond COVID are evident.

And then of course on top of that then we started to do things like deploy cameras into Marsden station, start to do the smart analytics. We also started working with a different type of partner. So organizations like Intel have been incredibly supportive of these initiatives, particularly in the UK with rail. We’ve done some quite tremendous things with them already, but I think working with partners like Intel, working with some of our more homegrown talent and people like Purple, we’ve actually been able to create the services that have the capabilities that drive better outcomes for people, passengers, but also local communities.

Kenton Williston: You know, something really strikes me about this broader context that you’re providing here in terms of what these technology platforms can deliver. We just heard an awful lot about things that were really secondary or even tertiary to the core mission of rail service, right? Like providing reliable high speed internet connections to areas that wouldn’t otherwise have it. It is not something you would think of as being a central part of what a rail system needs to deliver. But I think what’s interesting to me about that is it really speaks to when you have the right infrastructure in place, you can innovate on top of that in a lot of really interesting ways that you might not have even been thinking about ahead of time. And Simon, I’d love to hear a little bit more from your perspective about why you’re working with Cisco, why you’re working with Intel, and how using their platforms is opening up some of these new possibilities for you.

Simon Atterwell: Yeah, for sure. I kind of see our network as a unique asset for the UK So I’m going to call it UK PLC. And I think our network reaches parts that other networks don’t reach, because actually, where every piece of track goes—and bearing in mind that’s to most towns, villages, and cities in the UK—our network follows—both our fixed and our wireless networks follow. And we have an opportunity, when I say we, I mean ourselves, Cisco, Intel and other solution vendors, to really help drive a revised digital economy. There are some unique characteristics in the UK in that there are lots of areas in the UK where there are “not-spots,” or places where there isn’t mobile coverage, for example. And our assets and infrastructure can either act as a platform or an enabler for mobile network operators to roll out their wireless networks, or indeed to augment the wireless network that I run and operate as well.

So whether it’s fixed connectivity into homes, businesses, and local communities adjacent to the railway or even greater ambitions, then I think we are perfectly poised to have a positive impact on the UK economy by making it a much more digital place to live and to work, and to give people the freedom of choice as to actually where they work from. And of course that’s hugely relevant during these unprecedented times. But then when you extrapolate the thinking slightly further, there’s the ability to really assist with multimodal transport, for example, and autonomous transport, and integrated transport networks. There is lots of synergy and opportunity to leverage both investment, but also technology and coverage.

Then if you extrapolate it even further, I think Greg touched on this in terms of some of the enabling proofs of concept and services that we are standing up today, there is an opportunity for us to use our network to improve the connectivity for healthcare services, whether that is emergency healthcare services or whether it’s for hospitals and doctors nationally, but also the emergency services more generally in terms of fire and police and many others as well. I see what we’re building and collaborating on today to be a real enabler for a better, more integrated digital economy for UK PLC.

If I then flip this more towards railway and some of the use cases that we’re trying to address here, there’s everything from things like safety, crime, and security. And that’s very much about deploying and exploiting smart camera technology alongside visual analytics, which could actually monitor things like trespass, which is a big issue on the railway to prevent injury and death, but also security issues such as left luggage on the station concourse, as well as people that get dangerously close to trains that are at high speed, which can have catastrophic outcomes of course.

We then look at, how do we plan and design our station environments. And I think technology can really help through understanding passenger movement, help build the plans that improve the passenger experience, whether that’s retail or whether it’s about passenger information, or whether it’s about understanding where trains may be less busy. There are all sorts of ways to actually join up technology to really deliver key data and outcomes for our passengers and people that are using the rail environment.

Kenton Williston: Yeah, absolutely. I think, again, the thing that’s really fascinating to me here is just how broad those use cases are. I mean, it’s just anything and everything you can think of, and probably some things that none of us have thought of yet. It’s just everywhere. And again, I think the thing that’s really critical here are the two ideas we’ve been talking about this whole time. One, the fact that this is an incredibly complex and diverse set of use cases. A very much a go-it-alone approach is not going to do it. It requires a lot of collaboration between all sorts of different parties. And then the other, again, just this idea of the underlying technology being a good starting point to enable all this work to be done in a sensible way. To that point, Greg, there’s a couple things I wanted to ask you about a little bit further. So one is, you’d mentioned just in passing something called Purple. So I would love to know who and what Purple is, and how they fit into the landscape of what you’re doing.

Greg Butler: Let me tell you about a perfect example of how we have very rapidly adapted to known and unknown issues that are arising, and that’s a program called the Train and Station Innovation for Performance, TSIP. TSIP is a joint investment between Network Rail Telecom, Cisco, Intel, and some other partners where we have identified something close to about 140 use cases that require a solution. And so what we are doing is we’re building out the test track that sits in Melton Mowbray called RIDC, it’s the Rail And Innovation Development Centre. RIDC is about 26 miles of track where they do a lot of testing for trains. It is a true, real-life rail environment, and as Simon said, I’ve actually stood very close to a train as it whistled past me at about 120 miles an hour, and that’s pretty unnerving. So you understand why there is such a focus on safety. And we’re building out a connectivity platform there which will support this use case development.

And we have traditional partners like Intel, we have traditional civil partners, organizations, global organizations like Siemens or a UK-based organization called Telent. And then we’re also working with a new breed of partner, which is Purple. And Purple Transformation Group, PTG, has looked at the problems that we are facing from the problem down, rather than from the technology up. And they have a whole set of capabilities, including a bunch of very smart developers. Then we work together with them to identify not even what is the solution—how do we begin to tackle these challenges that are focused on safety, passenger experience, optimized performance, cost reduction. There’s plenty of things here we’re focused on that existed before COVID, that will exist long after COVID. And you mentioned it also earlier before, Kenton, how do we reduce carbon in the rail corridor?

So we’ve taken a very pragmatic approach to it, and we’ve used Purple to actually help us identify who are the key carbon contributors to the rail corridor, or what are the key carbon contributors, and therefore map the use cases that we’re focused on and the impact that those use cases have on those carbon emissions. Which is great, because now all of a sudden we can actually start to target carbon emissions in a proper manner. But also the tooling that they have created for us, which again is being adopted outside of rail, is around the tracking of those benefits. So you identify trespass that has a correlating impact on reduction of delays, and there are such things called penalty minutes that get charged if trains are delayed.

Carbon emissions. If we are enabling Network Rail to monitor track for say overgrowth, trees overgrowing starting to hit trains, if we can do that with cameras and smart analytics or even sensors, that reduces the need and the cost and the carbon emissions associated with maintenance crews going out and driving up and down the track and making sure it’s okay. We’re facing new problems and challenges, but we’re taking a very different approach to how those can be resolved. And a lot of that is Cisco working with other organizations that maybe we haven’t worked with before, or even organizations that might have in the past been considered to be competitors to Cisco.

Kenton Williston: I really love all the things you’re pointing out here about the ways that you can cut emissions, not just with the bog-standard things you’d think about, like moving from internal combustion engines to electric propulsion, but lots of corner cases that are not so obvious that have really meaningful impact, like just getting the throughput of your system to be as efficient as possible so you don’t have delays, you don’t have trains that are running empty—whatever the case might be. I really particularly like that example about the tree trimming. It’s not the most obvious example, but it matters. These things all really add up. And I understand that Network Rail has got a goal to be carbon neutral by 2050. Simon, can you tell me a little bit more about where you are on that trajectory, and how technology and especially the technology that we’ve been discussing are playing a role there.

Simon Atterwell: We’re looking at a number of things, as Greg has already described, in the way that we build and introduce new technology that enables us to vigorously test all of the use cases that can contribute towards environmental and sustainability outcomes—video and then analytics over the top on trains, for example, while they’re running along the track. It enables us to understand the amount of vegetation growth, the incursion on the railway, and, importantly, how that impedes a wireless signal that we use for rail emergency calls, for example.

So not only is it contributing to an environmental-planning outcome, but it’s also contributing to safety of the railway and our ability to make sure that passengers get home safe every day. We’ve got a mixture of stuff. Everything from solar- and wind-based backup technology that supports our REBs—which is rail equipment buildings that are dotted all along the track that house the telecommunications equipment that provides standby capability for batteries—all the way through, as I say, to sensor-based technology that allows us to design in environmental and sustainability solutions as outcomes right at the start of big civil schemes, and building back the railway to be a much better and greener place.

Kenton Williston: Of course you’ve got many peers in other regions of the world, other rail networks all around the world, who I’m sure are looking to do a lot of the same things. Like I know here in the States, for example, passenger rail is not quite as robust, but freight rail is incredibly robust here in the States, and pretty much all of the major North American carriers have also made carbon-neutral commitments, and I’m sure could benefit from a lot of these same technologies that we’ve been discussing here. So thinking about your global peers, Simon, I’d love to hear what you think they should be considering as they are tackling some of their own challenges. What would you recommend to them in terms of finding this collaborative approach, and good partners like Cisco and Intel to help them move forward?

Simon Atterwell: The answer to your question is not an easy one Kenton, because I think it’s about trying to orchestrate a perfect storm and aligning all of the stakeholders. Ensuring you’ve got the best technology, and ensuring you’ve got the best partners in place, which sounds like a simple recipe, but it can be quite difficult to achieve. I’m very fortunate, both in terms of the colleagues in Network Rail Telecom, and the partnerships that I have with the technology that’s available today, to be able to make great strides in introducing a lot of solutions at pace to solve some very complex rail challenges, as well as the adjacent benefits of trying to help the UK economy as well. If that’s an illustration of a perfect storm, then I’m happy to be in the center of it.

Kenton Williston: Very good. So Greg, I’m very interested to hear from your point of view how you are working with Intel to provide this underlying infrastructure that supports all of these efforts that are happening. Everything from improving the passenger experience in the station to cutting emission. There’s so many different things with so many different criteria, having a really strong underlying technology platform is so critical. What are you doing with Intel to facilitate that?

Greg Butler: It’s a few things. Intel is a strategic partner for Cisco and has been for some time, and sits at the core of a huge, vast amount of our product sets and offerings. They take on board the challenges that we are taking on board. They bring people to the table that we may not have even known about, let alone considered. We’re very lucky to have the support of Intel.

Kenton Williston: Fabulous. Is there anything either of you feel like we have missed discussing that you would like to add into the conversation?

Greg Butler: Yeah, I would actually. Which is that part of our remit for TSIP, the Train Station Innovation for Performance program, is obviously we use it as a showcase locally here in the UK, and that’s not just an industry-bespoke showcase; it’s for other industries, be they industrial-type industries like oil, mining, gas, or other sectors like finance and retail, but also on an international level. Network Rail and Network Rail Telecom, and quite rightly, are quite proud of what they’re doing there with us and the likes of Intel and Purple and others. And this is something that we want to showcase on a global scale. Now that’s obviously in Cisco’ and Intel’s interests, because it helps showcase what we’re doing here in the UK, and the applicability of that beyond the UK

But I think it’s also important to show success, and a model here where we have been able to very quickly react and adapt and evolve to meet this new set of circumstances, but also with solutions that are sustainable beyond what we hope will stop becoming a pandemic in the future. So it’s very much open, or will be open, for business. We’ve got guys up there at the moment installing stuff, and they’re going to be getting there up and running over the next few months, but it’s very much something that we want to invite Intel, Intel customers, partners, friends, as well as others to come and have a look at, and actually see if it’s something that they’re interested in trialing or developing with us, or actually deploying themselves.

Kenton Williston: Yes. That sounds amazing and I’m really thrilled to hear the availability of all these technologies to be so readily adapted by others, not only in the rail space, but all sorts of other sectors. So with that, Greg, I just want to thank you again for joining us. We really appreciate your time today.

Greg Butler: You are very welcome. Thank you.

Kenton Williston: And Simon, you as well, I really appreciate all your insights.

Simon Atterwell: My absolute pleasure. Good to meet you.

Kenton Williston: And thanks to our listeners for joining us. For the latest innovations from Cisco and NRT, follow them on Twitter at @Cisco and @NetworkRail, and on LinkedIn at Cisco and Network-Rail. If you enjoyed listening, please support us by subscribing and rating us on your favorite podcast app. This has been the IoT Chat. We’ll be back next time with more ideas from industry leaders at the forefront of IoT design.

The preceding transcript is provided to ensure accessibility and is intended to accurately capture an informal conversation. The transcript may contain improper uses of trademarked terms and as such should not be used for any other purposes. For more information, please see the Intel® trademark information.

This transcript was edited by Erin Noble, copy editor. 

IoT Smart-City Solutions Offer New Opportunities for SIs

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Picture a stalled escalator in an airport. How often have you stopped and reported the problem to the right authorities? In the time that maintenance personnel find and fix the issue, that minor inconvenience might cascade into a series of headaches for transit management.

The damaged escalator is a stand-in for larger challenges cities face every day.

Systems, however small, break often. There are not enough eyes to alert the right personnel before these minor issues escalate into bigger problems and cost cities money. “There is a large physical space that relies on people-based intervention, which means we are depending on an individual’s expertise and training. This leads to added costs, time lags, and impacts the user experience,” says Ashish Khare, General Manager and Global Practice Head for IoT and Smart Cities at Wipro Technologies, a provider of comprehensive IT/OT solutions and services.

IoT-based intelligence helps solve these problems and reduce operational costs. Cities need a centralized IoT platform, Khare says, “To connect the physical and the virtual world, to manage operations centrally, and automate intelligently with minimal human intervention.”

An IoT-enabled smart city need not depend on people to report a broken escalator or elevator or traffic signal. Facility managers can exercise digital control over a physical world, know of the problem even before it happens, and fix it proactively.

AI Offers Digital Insights

Data derived with the help of computer vision and IoT feed machine learning & AI algorithms. When combined with managed lifecycle services, such algorithms can increase revenue opportunities and reduce operational costs for a wide range of markets—from cities to retail to healthcare.

Before these technologies can contribute, though, they must frequently navigate barriers. There is the problem of heterogeneous communication protocols—not all devices speak the same language, which complicates the job of harnessing data and gathering insights.

Reliable internet connectivity to access and act on insights at the edge is another challenge. After all, bridging the physical OT and digital IT worlds does not count for much if you cannot access insights in real time at the edge.

Finally, an ad hoc approach has led to data silos. “Multiple locations, multiple systems, and multiple tracks have been solved by fringe solutions with different technology players,” Khare says. “Such splintered IoT deployments are difficult to manage.”

A central open-architecture solution like Wipro’s Smart i-Connect platform can help solve these challenges. The platform and managed services fall under operating expenditures, so cities need not break budgets with steep upfront capex costs.

Wipro’s Smart i-Connect platform leverages distributed computing with assured and secured communication, which enables cities to undertake IoT-based automations at scale.

Wipro Smart i-Connect also enables cities to adopt a modular approach to implementation and scale their ambitions gradually: They bite off only what they can chew.

In an #IoT #SmartCity, sensors on escalators will keep an eye on temperature and vibration profiles to alert maintenance staff when one is about to go out of service. @wipro via @insightdottech

A Smooth Takeoff for City Airports

Take the case of an airport where, among other achievements, Wipro’s Smart i-Connect solution optimized staffing and improved the traveler experience.

It is not news that passengers hate waiting in long security lines before they fly. What a few may not realize is that airport management does not like those lines either. After all, the more time passengers spend in security, the less time they have, and the less money they spend at airport stores and restaurants.

Wipro uses booking data and flight schedules and the flow of passengers to determine peak times during the day. Knowing the ebb and flow patterns of passengers helped management staff security areas for faster service. IoT-driven image analytics and proximity sensors help everything from queue management to offering restaurant deals to customers based on location.

Wipro works with systems integrators to provide the stand-alone Wipro Smart i-Connect platform or integrate it with in-house managed services. Intel® technology underlies the high-performance edge systems required for real-time analytics. And the Intel® OpenVINO™ Toolkit facilitates edge AI and computer vision-based applications from IoT-derived data.

IoT Tech Delivers ROI Across Industries

Using IoT to drive efficiencies need not apply to airports alone. Complete water lifecycle management for parched cities or optimizing the customer experience so the public will use public transit more often–these are just a few of the many ways IoT can help industries achieve desired outcomes.

The return on investment becomes apparent over time with costs and operational efficiencies easy to measure. An improved customer (or traveler) experience will show up as increased revenue.

In airports, there is an indirect long-term impact from a frictionless travel experience: better ratings for airports, which in turn can drive traffic. “Travelers do choose their transit hubs based on how easy their experience is,” Khare says.

Khare predicts IoT deployment will become ubiquitous just like the mobile phone. “Everything will become increasingly connected,” Khare says. “Intelligence and control for efficiencies will always be required.” Expect a future where smart engineered IoT is woven into the very fabric of our lives.

As for that broken escalator in the airport? You might not find one too often. In an IoT smart city, sensors on escalators will keep an eye on temperature and vibration profiles to alert maintenance staff when one is about to go out of service.

The next time you pass through an airport, expect fewer glitches and more time for a snack before boarding your flight.

 

This article was edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Editorial Director for insight.tech.