Best Of
Re: How will the Coronavirus pandemic impact the Digital Transformation in Industry?
Agree. I think we are going to see innovative "Network Orchestrators" emerge from this crisis.
Re: What is the role of open source vs proprietary licensing in industrial AI?
At the risk (or benefit) of starting a debate... :-)
In general, I think OSS (open source software) is a low-cost follower business strategy. It's very hard to generate sufficient revenues to develop and support complex technologies. Even if it's great, the technology itself is not enough; awareness of a new category or type of solution is very expensive indeed. New technologies also need field engineering, product management, market development, and more. The OSS business models simply don't provide enough revenue to do this (with the possible exception of cloud services...long story). Thus, despite its marketing advantage, open source rarely (never?) colonizes new markets. As an obvious example, Linux (the OSS poster child) was originally a competitor to Windows and paid Unix...not the creator of the OS category. Of course, open source can and does cannibalize existing markets, but not until they are "large" (like multiple $100m). You can't look at the end-state "great open source" and ignore the evolutionary business chain that built it. Bottom line, open source is typically not an incubator of successful innovation. OSS is a cannibal, not a colonist (counter examples welcome).
Industrial systems are even harder. They have tough requirements, little expertise in software, limited user bases, and long (long!) lifetimes. Thus, relying on a community developer network before it's clearly established is very risky, and...nobody goes first. Of course, I work for a proprietary software vendor, so I can't claim to be unbiased. But, my best answer to your question, unpopular as it may be, would be that open source is unlikely to play a big role in industrial systems, at least in these early days.
Re: Introduce Yourself Here
Happy to join the community!
A short intro -- I'm the editorial director of IoT Evolution World, including the IIoT News Hub, Smart City Sentinel and IoT Evolution Health industry news channels. I'm also the Conference Chair of the IoT Evolution Expo, an IoT thought-leadership event designed to bring the best minds in the IoT, IIoT and Smart City together to grow the industry.
I'm really looking forward to joining the discussions here and learning from the IIC community. Feel free to reach out any time with questions.
-Ken
Re: Digital Twins and IoT Trustworthiness - how do they relate?
The word ‘Digital Twin’ has a wide variety of meanings.
One can define a Digital Twin as the online representation of some aspect(s) of an actual operational device.
Some types of functionality can be modeled mathematically or by means of behavioral modeling. This can be built into a ‘predictive’ Digital Twin. Systems architects can use this model to actively explore how their proposed solutions will react to expected and unexpected operational circumstances. This serves as an active, auditable record of the design and the testing thereof. During development such an approach allows for the actual device functionality to be tested against the model to establish how well it preforms. This methodology engenders trust in the design process and leads to more trustworthy system.
Other types of Digital Twins are the authoritative holder of a set of measurements taken from the actual device that can be hosted online and probed in some manner.
The Digital Twin (of either type) can be used to help detect abnormal or unexpected events in operational devices as the expected functionality or measurements of historical activity are actively compared to current device measured activity. To measure is to know and such real time analytic cross-checking functionality engenders trust is it re-assures end users that all is well in their system.