Industrial Internet of Things – What's in it for CSPs?

Increasing productivity. Enhancing efficiency. Avoiding downtime. Achieving operational visibility. Optimizing scheduling. Reducing costs.

These are goals companies have been pursuing since before the first Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. In the time that's followed, industrial transformation has been spurred by advances in technology, including coal, gas, electronics, nuclear, renewable energy, and the Internet – which brings us to IIoT, or the Industrial Internet of Things.

IIoT – the use of interconnected sensors, instruments, and other devices to facilitate productivity and efficiency improvements through data collection, exchange, and analysis – can offer industry players benefits, including increases in reliability, efficiency, and performance, as well as better insight into customer behavior, and improvements in staff safety.

But what does IIoT mean for the communication service providers (CSPs) who enable that interconnectedness?

Implemented correctly, IIoT can secure customer loyalty, attract new customers, and open new revenue streams. While delivering IIoT services can be complex, it offers a substantial monetization opportunity.

Giving customers what they need now…

In the world of industrial IoT, the stakes can be extremely high. Service level agreements (SLAs) can't be compromised because, unlike many convenience-driven consumer IoT applications, IIoT often supports mission-critical systems with major financial and/or health and safety consequences to failure. A best effort won't cut it, which means you'll need to overcome the following main challenges when providing IIoT services:

1. Scalability – Management of billions of connected devices
2. Management – Multi-tenant and centralized management of IoT services
3. Interoperability – Enabling communication between applications, vendor systems, and devices
4. Vertical insights – Deep domain-related analytics
5. Security – End-to-end solution and SIM security

As part of delivering reliable, robust solutions, your IIoT customers will be looking for:

Proactive monitoring – built-in alarms and escalation management to proactively monitor service and device performance (even better if they can be integrated with third-party systems).

Automated troubleshooting – automatic resolution of technical issues to increase customer satisfaction while avoiding costly manual intervention and truck rolls

Uber scalability – the ability to support millions of devices, sensors, and gateways so you can meet your customers where they are and grow with them.

… and supporting their growth in the future

While reliable connectivity is the cornerstone to keeping your customers loyal, you can build your business as your customers grow theirs by offering benefits including:

Support for multiple business verticals – eliminate siloed IoT systems and operations with a common platform.

Increased visibility – streamline processes for managed devices with an all-in-one operations dashboard.

Ability to expand service offerings – quickly create, define, and launch new service offerings with a set service catalog, while automated rules simplify the deployment of connected services.

Overcoming the complexity

While there are undoubtedly significant opportunities offered by the scale and speed of IIoT adoption, the challenges are real, too.

The unprecedented growth in smart devices – and the data associated with them – leads to the question of how to process and manage all that data and how to ensure security in the face of so much connectivity.

As a CSP, customers turn to you for answers, and in turn, you need a partner you can trust. That's where Incognito can help with our Unified Enterprise IoT Platform, which offers:

• Centralized device and service management approach
• Analytics
• Support for multiple IIoT use cases and applications on a single IIoT platform (e.g., utilities, predictive maintenance for manufacturing, asset tracking)
• Common operational dashboard and processes for all managed devices
• Centralized support center
• Extreme scalability
• Fully productized approach = fast deployment
• Pay-as-you-grow business model

Incognito can help you:

1. Scale, by managing devices, services, and applications from a central IIoT platform
2. Monetize, with our ready-to-go IoT solution with vertical application support
3. Save on integration costs and expensive duplication of efforts
4. Streamline your operations to reduce costs
5. Interoperate, by enabling communication between devices and applications

With over 30 years in the telecom space, we understand device management and network data collection. We're here to help you get the most out of your IIoT platform investment with our comprehensive device management, service orchestration, and analytics capabilities. Schedule a call to find out how.