IoT, Blockchain, and AI – 3 of the hottest terms in technology – drew a crowd of 8,000 in Amsterdam for the annual IoT Tech Expo Europe. Executives from the Bluetooth Group, Rolls Royce, and Shell all delivered keynotes explaining IoT’s role in the European industrial landscape. Thales, PTC, Microsoft, Ruckus, 1NCE, Device Authority, and DevicePilot were among the sponsors and exhibitors for the event. Read more

Until July 15th when one of the thirty-two qualifying international football teams claims the title of Word Champion in the final game of the tournament, it is all eyes on Russia as they host the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Not many of us are fortunate enough to hop around the eleven Russian host cities throughout June and July to enjoy the tournament live, and so a vast majority of the global population is confined to a screen-based experience. Learn more

If you are worried about the future fortitude of the cybersecurity and data privacy efforts intended to protect your personal information, you are not alone. Lately, there has been an outcry of concern from consumers, media outlets, and politicians regarding that very issue. Learn more

If you are worried about the future fortitude of the cybersecurity and data privacy efforts intended to protect your personal information, you are not alone. Lately, there has been an outcry of concern from consumers, media outlets, and politicians regarding that very issue. Learn more

As companies shift towards relying more on intelligent robots in their work flows, the concern for human job replacement and robot autonomy rises. The increase of ecommerce has intensified order fulfillment requirements, which pushes enterprises to need faster order processing and delivery speeds. While the implementation of collaborative robots (cobots) have many benefits in terms of streamlining order fulfilment work flows, the full impact on human job replacement has yet to be determined. Read more

BlackBerry hosted a live unveiling of their newest smartphone, the KEY2, this Thursday. The company’s marketing strategies and messaging show that BlackBerry is aiming squarely at business professionals with its KEY2 smartphone. While this is the right move it may also be their only move. The KEY2 is very similar to the KEYone, however, does offer some improvements to the keyboard, memory configuration, rear camera and overall design. Learn more

Without competitive software, even the most advanced industrial PC (IPC) hardware will be left behind in the industrial IoT. As industry 4.0 advances, IPC manufacturers are being forced to adapt their offerings, tooling, and support to embrace the IIoT. Most IPC manufacturers are quickly expanding their strategic alliances with various software vendors, boosting the abilities of their hardware offerings in order to meet the needs of smarter and more connected industrial environments. Read more

In their WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) this Monday in San Jose, California, Apple unveiled a host of new software for their iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac that will be made available to the public later this year. The newest operating systems are the iOS 12 for iPhones and iPads and MacOS Mojave for Apple’s laptops and desktops. In addition to flashing their newest products and updates, Apple addressed iPhone addiction and data protection, thereby seizing the WWDC as an opportunity to paint themselves as a company that cares about the consumer. Learn more

In Part 1 of our NIWeek 18 blog, we featured an overview of some software-focused product announcements from National Instruments: LabVIEW 2018, LabVIEW NXG 2.1, and FlexLogger In Part 2, we continue the overview with a look at InstrumentStudio and SystemLink. Read more

The VDC embedded team was recently in Austin, Texas to attend NIWeek 2018 – National Instruments’ 24th annual conference. For a broad overview of this show, please see the related VDC View from Dan Mandell “NIWeek 2018: Instrumenting Industries for Intelligence”. As always, the event brought together leading customers, thousands of engineers, and other industry experts to hear the latest announcements and highlights of NI’s role in supporting cutting-edge test and measurement deployments. Read more

Direct sales over the internet currently generates less than 2% of the revenue for proximity sensors, photoelectric sensors, and limit switches. But use of this sales channel is forecast to grow at an average of 24% annually through 2022. This rapid expansion in the use of e-commerce by proximity sensor suppliers is disrupting market dynamics of a segment that has long been slow to evolve. Learn more

ServiceMax concluded its annual conference this week, in which the company showcased its offerings, the benefits it drives for its customers, and its partner network. CEO Scott Berg led the keynote address, which covered ServiceMax’s new features and its achievements over the past year. Berg encouraged attendees to consider three questions throughout the conference: how to optimize when service occurs, how to make the most of IoT, and how to engage with proactive and predictive maintenance. These issues tie together some of the most important issues and priorities in field service. Learn more

In the early days of the IoT, many industry participants had assumed that nearly all IoT device data and sensor data would be sent to the cloud for storage and analytics. As large scale implementations began to run, the sheer volume of raw data generated by IoT systems made it apparent that significant portions of data needed to be filtered and/or pre-processed to reduce the volume of data sent to the cloud, as well as latencies that might occur in sending and processing data in the cloud. Thus the concept of IoT edge computing was born. Read more

AWS showcased its constantly-evolving services portfolio at its 2 day AWS Summit London, a regional conference supplementing its annual flagship re:Invent in November. Day 1 centered around AWS developer and startup education, while day 2 featured a keynote by CTO Werner Vogels and UK & Ireland Managing Director Gavin Jackson. Read more

Hannover Messe 2018 took place from April 23rd through April 27th at the Hannover Fairground in Hannover, Germany, and was held in conjuction with CeMAT 2018, a trade fair centering on intralogistics and supply chain management. This year’s show drew approximately 210,000 attendees and featured 5,000 exhibitors from 75 countries including the 2018 official partner country, Mexico. Though attendance was down from last year’s record 225,000 visitors, the fairground’s five million square feet of exhibition space remained jam-packed from open to close each day. Learn more