How do you judge the best-in-show? By the bright eyes and bushy tails? Probably not if it is a tech fair. So how should one rate the stands at IoT Solutions World Congress (IOTSWC) in Barcelona? Is it a size thing? Is it a glamour thing – about the razzle-dazzle of the displays? Is it about corporate wealth and brand reputation? Or is it about partners? Any way you look at it, AWS stole the show last week, and should probably get the big rosette.
It is a silly game, and hardly scientific; but it is instructive in the context. The IoT market is at a crossroads, as discussed. In Barcelona, on a key date in the IoT calendar, none of the ‘big beasts’ of industrial tech turned up, outside of the auditoriums anyway. Actually, that is not quite true; Rockwell Automation had a stand, as did ST Micro. Telefónica was there, too – but then Madrid is a two hour ride, and Barcelona is the spiritual home of Cellular Inc.
On the other hand, Microsoft and Google, the other actors in the hyper-scale play, were not, with one laying off staff in its IoT division and the other quitting the scene altogether; perhaps they wouldn’t have showed anyway. Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom, both exhibiting some strategic ambiguity with their IoT tactics, were not here, either. And Ericsson? Well, it has downed tools and scarpered. But AWS had 26 partners in tow, and the busiest stand by far.
IOTSWC was a weird show; there were other strange absences and other good exhibits. But in the circumstances, AWS brought its A-game, along with its family and friends – including notably, as the armband gets passed for the supply-side captaincy, crucial Industry 4.0 heavyweights like Siemens, Software AG, and KORE Wireless. So just explain, Mister AWS, why everyone else has exited the IoT stage, and you remain, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?
“It is very simple,” responds Yasser Alsaied, in charge of the IoT business at AWS. “One of our first customers is Amazon, itself – the warehouses, the trucks, the robotics, all the processing centres. They are all our customers, too. And if you use your own technology, it has to be the best. By definition. And Amazon is known for its reliability and scale. We are just making those IoT services available to others as well. So that is the answer.”
It is a good one, and also an obvious one – but it is worth hearing, again, to make a distinction between the coal-face Industry 4.0 experience at Amazon, and rivals like Google and Microsoft (as well as the traditional telco set). In the end, the self-medicated digitisation of its vast retail-logistics operations make it more like Siemens, Schneider Electric, or Rockwell Automation, which are all playing both sides of the IoT supply line, as vendors and customers.
But the most impressive aspect of the AWS display at IOTSWC is its community spirit. Like we wrote before, in justification of the closure of Enterprise IoT Insights, it takes a desperate village to raise a difficult child, and AWS has arrived in Barcelona mob-handed, as well as bushy-tailed. Alsaied comments: “Specialist partners are the biggest factor for success in this space, because you can’t be expert at everything – just because it doesn’t scale.”
In the end, scale is the only thing for AWS, of course – and hyper-scale at that, sprung by its core cloud-computing proposition. Amazon’s interest in IoT, and in low/high-power private networks and IT/OT integration tools as sub-divisions within the IoT realm, is to load its big server rooms and analytics engines with more enterprise data – to manage the Industry 4.0 donkey work after the sensor loads and edge nodes have been connected.
It is offering scale for scale, plus a home for change-services on top, and some networking to accelerate the offer. Alsaied says: “The scale that industry needs, and the reliability and availability, means it has to go to the cloud. And for that, you need the connectors. Much of the data is already there, but it is locked inside factories and plants. Because there is no way to connect to the cloud. That is where these IT services come in – to make it happen.”
He reckons 90 percent of industrial data is in edge silos. “Manufacturing data has always been there – the yield data, the machine data. But companies need a different lens on it now,” he says, suggesting the public cloud, or at least some hybrid version of it, is the only venue to efficiently manage its rising volume and advanced logic. John Deere, the tractor maker, is using its TwinMaker tool to build some kind of interactive cloud twin of its production sites.
“You know how many days are lost in email chains and conference calls? With this, an expert in a different country can dial-into the root problem inside a remote factory. The whole question and approval process is solved within a minute,” he explains. How is the paranoid and reticence among classical manufacturing companies, say, when it comes to putting production data and trade secrets onto the public cloud? “Yes, it takes education,” he responds.
This is the key part of the conversation, maybe. Alsaied explains the AWS sales shtick when talking about digital change with enterprises, based on a “work-backwards-from-the-customer” start-point, he says – which sounds like the only sensible approach to Industry 4.0 consultancy. “It is a genius process, which starts with what the customer wants – higher yields, fleet maintenance. That is the wish, and then we return with what makes sense,” he explains.
There is education both ways, he says – about what is required and what is available. “People have to be educated about anything new in life – to get agreement on,” he says. But the point is rather that the supplier is obliged to learn first – which sounds obvious, and is increasingly the way, but has taken the tech market an age to understand. And then the consultancy practice really unfurls, and AWS and co go to work to show what else is possible.
“Sometimes manufacturing companies prefer the status quo – because things work, and the philosophy is you don’t change what’s not broken. But our role is also to show what else you can do – so it works even better. And that can mean a single sensor. We have a manufacturing customer in Mexico, which makes plastic inserts for cars, and we provided this little sensor from one of our partners down there,” says Alsaied, referring to the stand on the show floor downstairs.
“It magnets or glues to an engine, works for five years on a single battery, and collects [data about] the harmony of the machine – and builds an AI model in the cloud and flags anomalies if there’s an oil problem, a heat problem. It was magnificent for them. Because they can be anywhere in the world, and watch the graphs that everything is fine, and then rush someone to the site if there is any change, before a fire or some catastrophe happens.”
He adds: “So once you explain this – to people who might resist change – then they see the value. And in the end, if it doesn’t provide value in terms of productivity or efficiency, then why would they take it? So we show them the facts, the examples, and then this education happens. AWS is really good at that process – to start with the customer, and work backwards from there.” It is a good response, of course, and it sounds like the right approach, as noted above.
But it is hard to figure, as well – whether AWS is any more enlightened than the rest of the market – which has started to pay lip service, at least, to this kind of soft-sales patter. If they ask for a hammer, you don’t give them a screwdriver, said someone in these pages recently – as if there has been revelation in the Industry 4.0 space that the ‘customer is always correct’. Was this always the AWS way? Is it a cultural thing; something that AWS just gets?
“I’ve been in the tech space for 32 years – between chipsets and software, defence and telecoms,” says Alsaied, making passing reference to a storied career in Qualcomm, AMD, Philips Electronics, and Nortel Networks, among others. “The formula that helps us, and helps customers, is to start with the solution they imagine – and build from the elements we have, starting with a reliable and scalable cloud and 200 services for analytics, cameras, anything.
“The value we offer is to join those 200 services, or join some of them, to make a solution. It could be something we already have; and most of the time it is. And it is not just for them, but for anyone like them. Industrial customers worry about similar things. With this service formula, you can offer it anywhere in the world – which accelerates this 4.0 journey. That is the idea. And the real joy is to help the customer win, and make money and grow.”
Whatever; it is hard to know how unique, or rather how well-drilled and well-advanced, this customer-backwards approach is for AWS – and not really for AWS to say. What seems more clear, from its display down-below and its discussion up-top, is that AWS understands very well the idea of industrial IoT as a team sport. “Partnership is a key to success in this market. No one can build everything, top to bottom. You see the trend in the market,” says Alsaied.
He is referring to the consolidation in the IoT market, and particularly the IoT-side retreat from building specialist vertical expertise. What about sideways, left-to-right, across the horizontal tech stack? Is AWS so interested in those partnerships? He responds: “Yes. There are two sides on our booth – one side for smart buildings and smart cities, and one for device makers showing gateways and cameras and sensors with AWS services built-in.”
What about the connectivity space? Because there is a cliché, almost, that hyperscalers regard connectivity like an Industry 4.0 app tray. Is it a special case? Is it to be treated separately? “It can’t be separate. I was at Qualcomm for 15 years, and Nortel before; connectivity is the pipe to connect the data – to take it to where it needs to go. It is an essential part of the digitization story – whether it is 5G, Wi-Fi 7, LPWAN. All of it is good. I don’t see any friction.”
So, if we put it another way; who primes the supplier pump if a big manufacturing brand wants to connect and animate its factory? Because AWS will come mob-handed to the table, but so will Vodafone and Kyndryl, and so will Nokia even? The answer might be that any and all of these, in various combinations, will do it, and that it is a silly question. But you get the point; that there are shifting sands in the field of battle? So how should we rationalise that?
“Yes, so it is interesting how technology is moving, right? Previously the answer would have been easy – that we are going to do it all, and we are going to do it on our own. But challenges with scale and time-to-market mean that view is shifting – about who to work with and who to talk to. The AWS way, to work backwards from the customer, applies here, too. Because they will have an idea of what to do, and their idea about who to work with is probably shifting.
“If they come to AWS, we will work backwards with them to see who else can join, and then create the right story for them. But I have been a year-and-a-half at Amazon, and been in a lot of customer discussions, and I haven’t once seen any major friction [about how to fit a solution together, or how to lead its design]. It is always a big canvas, and there is a humbleness in the industry these days, I feel – that people want to work with each other.”
