IDC IoT Forum Bucharest 2016: Transforming Business and Improving Citizen’s Lives.

The second IDC’s IoT Forum in Romania was a successful reflexion of the innovation adoption opportunity momentum. The interest for the discussed topics and the participants’ level demonstrate a real growing of maturity for the local Internet of Thing industry. The demand for innovative technologies is real. The figures are clear.

According to IDC, approximately 11 billion devices are connected to the internet around the globe today, with this number expected to increase to 30 billion by 2020, and to 80 billion by 2025. Ten years from now, 152,000 new devices will be connected every minute. The worldwide expected market size will be more than $1.5 trillion in 2020.

But who is generating this spectacular development of the market? The Internet of Things (IoT) is not a simple trend or a huge opportunity. IoT market is a complex ecosystem with multiple specialisations and thousands of players, including sensors device vendors, IoT infrastructure providers, software developers, and Cloud services providers. For the enterprise ecosystem, IoT is also representing the interference between Business, Operations, and Information Technology levels.

Looking to our region, IDC research identifies the same development trends estimated in previous studies, with a projection of 1.4 Billion connected things by 2020, and a CEE IoT market opportunity of 24 Billion dollars. Despite de name associated with the Internet, IoT is more than a simple connectivity. Any IoT system is a conglomerate between devices, platforms, applications and services enabling enable a world of connected things.

But which are the IoT market development drivers in CEE? Like in other regions the most dynamic industries are transportations & logistics, manufacturing and utilities. In a “Use cases leading the IoT market in CEE”, IDC identify as top 5 verticals according to market investment: Freight Monitoring, Manufacturing Operations, Smart Grid, Production Asset Management, and Smart Home. Smart transportation and personal healthcare are two area with most dynamic development also. IDC identified as industries with highest development rate: Intelligent Transportation, Connected Vehicles, and Personal Wellness.

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Like in the first edition of IDC IoT Forum in 2016, this year the value of the event was also reflected by the value of the vendors coming in Bucharest to show their IoT solution proposals. Each participant vendor is coming from a different area and covered different IoT specialisation. So the keynote presentation was sustained by Vodafone, Veeam, BearingPoint and Philips Lighting.

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One year ago Vodafone announced in Romania the availability of his new business connectivity solutions offered under the Industry 4.0 umbrella. In his IDC IoT Forum speech Marius Coman – IoT Country Sale Manager at Vodafone Romania presented Vodafone’s tailored services from Industry 4.0 offers, ranging from Connected Cabinets, Video Surveillance, and Digital Media Signage until to Fleet Management & Mobile Asset Tracking.

Very interesting was the presence of BearingPoint, company specialised in business and technology consultancy services, marking a first public apparition during an IT event in Romania. BearingPoint IoT services offering is based on the deep understanding of the challenges in all industries. BearingPoint Smart Factory and Internet of Things Lab brings about Industry 4.0 through sensor technology, machine-to-machine communication and the integration of PLM, CRM and ERP systems to create extensive technical know-how. Complex project experience in the implementation of smart products allow BearingPoint to offer smart value-added Internet of Things services like Predictive Management solutions in manufacturing, connected cars, and Smart City (smart traffic, air quality control, smart parking, smart lighting, smart energy, etc.)

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Coming from the virtualization technologies, Veeam is one of the IT industry players with fast growing on the market. Veeam Availability Suite combines the industry-leading backup, restore and replication capabilities with the advanced monitoring, reporting and capacity planning functionality. Veeam Availability Suite delivers all necessary to reliably ensure and manage any virtual environment, providing a high availability data centre which benefit of high-speed recovery, data loss avoidance, verified recoverability, leveraged data, and complete visibility.

IoT systems security is one of the most controversial subjects of the moment, considered by many analysts as one of the main inhibitors in the large adoption of IoT technologies. In this context was a very good option for the organisers to introduce IoT security issues in the agenda. In his presentation dedicated to “High-Profile Cyber Attacks – a Wake-Up Call for IoT Security”, Alexei Proskura – Program Director Security at IDC CEE. Comparing other new technologies areas, IoT systems are particularly more difficult to manage security issues due to large numbers of components: sensors, appliances and connecting devices, infrastructure platforms, application and services. Separated and integrated security systems should cover a large diversity of vulnerability areas, from system and OS integrity, to boot process, communication, software updates, authentication procedures, audit and accountability, until cryptographic elements generation, data and lifecycle management.

idc-iot-foto-1 Security should solve problems coming from data collection systems, physical threats, external information exposure and data profiling. Any efficient IoT system should include elementary functions to reduce attack risk surface, to retain hardware and software integrity. Testing phases and properly user education are other mandatory actions any CIO or CSO should consider for a safety IoT system adoption.

A special mention for the large diversity of subjects covered by the Panel Discussion which enriched IDC IoT Forum Agenda: “Smart Cities”, “What Will Make the Headlines in 2017 and Beyond?”, “Security and Regulatory Concerns in IoT”, and “IoT for Better Lives – The Benefits of IoT in Health”. Each discussion panel has special guests from the local industry, startups and professional associations involved in the IoT ecosystem, covering the basic problems opened by the adoption of the smart service at the local public administration, in industry, in logistics and in healthcare services.

idc-connect Closing a very rich agenda event, the Connect Workshops organised by IDC gave to the participants the possibility to exchange experience and face-to-face discuss with the specialists. Dedicated Connect Workshop tables was organised for the major subjects presented in the Forum like:

IOT Availability without limits
• Is IoT Security a technology problem?
• Implementing IoT – What to expect and how to proceed?
• Industry 4.0 – Transforming businesses with IoT Solutions

A very interesting innovation used for the first time during an IDC event in Romania was the dedicated mobile application of the IoT Forum. Here between regular information about the event agenda, speakers and partners, any participant had the possibility to answer to few open poll question, offering an add-hock quality survey about the general perception on each discussed subject.

IDC IoT Forum organised on 24 November in Bucharest is part of a regional program initiated by IDC in most all of the countries from CEE region. IDC’s Forum mission is to help the conference participants to better understand the current trends, to identify areas of future growth, and to be prepared for any opportunity in their specific fields.

IoT Market Expectation in CEE – by 2019

25.25 Billion – the number of fibre connections

881.25 Million – annual spending on connected vehicles

239.42 Million – annual in-store offer revenue

233.65 Million – annual omni-channel revenue

20.19 Million – annual telehealth systems revenue

92.49 Million – annual smartphone shipments

Source: The Future of Connected Life in CEE, IDC April 2016