The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) announced a new program designed to stimulate IIoT adoption across industry, IIC said in a statement.
Named the IIC Accelerator Program, the program includes several initiatives to appeal to end users of IoT technology who want to discuss challenges with their peers, get advice from IIC experts, or seek guidance to solve complex technical problems.
Since 2014, the IIC has developed seven foundational documents that have become de facto guidelines for enterprises seeking to adopt IIoT technology solutions. To “invigorate the next phase of digital transformation,” the IIC says its focus is to “apply these frameworks and member expertise to industry-specific use cases for the benefit of technology end users.”
“The initial hype around IIoT has dissipated and technologists must move from designing to deploying solutions. End users of IIoT technology are looking for real examples of applying the new business models needed to compete. The leaders will use these offerings to realize the potential of IIoT to cut costs and improve the safety, efficiency and productivity of their operations,” said 451 Research VP Christian Renaud.
With the Accelerator Program, the IIC aims to enable technology end users to achieve tangible results by assisting from ideation to implementation, with problem definition, helping to identify technologies, offering a neutral platform for innovation and delivering pilots.
IIC also highlighted that the initiative will also allow vendors and systems integrators to develop, test and offer solutions to technology end users across all industries, fostering an end-to-end solution development ecosystem.
“Our goal is to reduce technology end user uncertainty around IoT and to help guide the industry users through their IoT journey. Most companies have a few security, analytics or deep learning experts on staff, but the IIC has them all,” said IIC VP of Industry Programs Howard Kradjel. “Our neutral platform fosters partnering and helps technology end users solve real problems via our member ecosystem.”
The IIC accelerator program includes:
-End User Leadership Councils – collaborative councils of senior executives representing various industries interested in establishing vision and influencing direction in IoT in an industry and implementing, testing or using IoT solutions in their facilities.
-Testbeds – experimentation platforms for conducting transparent and replicable testing of new concepts, new business models and emerging technologies.
-Test Drives – Test drives reduce uncertainty of technology adoption and intend to produce validated, market-ready solutions to be rolled out throughout an enterprise.
-IoT Challenges – public contests aimed at solving real problems and advancing the validation of industrial internet applications and solutions.
-Special Interest Groups (SIG) – groups of members and non-members created for the purpose of collaboration with essential experts in a particular area of technology. The first SIG is dedicated to Over-the-Air (OTA) updates and seeks to create requirements for OTA solutions for the automotive and other industries.
Last month, the IIC launched the Smart Buildings Challenge, a program designed to give smart building technology suppliers the possibility to collaborate with customers to create targeted solutions for smart buildings.
The challenge presents contestants with a set of smart building problems faced by building operators and investors, as well as a set of parameters required of the solutions, IIC said.
Under the terms of the challenge, technology suppliers will develop solution proposals and compete to deploy pilot implementations to fulfill the requirements outlined by the challenge.
