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| Is it finally time to get serious about enterprise data sharing? |
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| By Stacey Higginbotham |
These days, when marketers and tech companies discuss digital transformation, they're often talking about 5G deployments or digital twins. Whereas five years ago, when people talked about digital transformation or Industry 4.0, the focus was on data sharing and building out ecosystems.
But even back then it was clear that to really make a big impact the future of any digitization effort had to extend beyond the factory or enterprise. And to make that happen, a company had to share its data. Figuring out how to do so was initially seen as one of the next hurdles in the IoT, but over the last few years, figuring out how to share company data seemed to fall by the wayside.
Which is why I was so excited to see that, according to The Information, Microsoft is working on a service that will help companies share data in a secure manner. This service, called Project Oakes, has me hoping that we're now ready for a conversation about sharing enterprise data so we can make IoT ecosystems real. |
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| — If you think it's hard getting children to share snacks, imagine how hard it is to get corporations to share data. |
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Let's say a manufacturing facility wanted to use sensors to track the health of its machines. The folks inside the factory would have to share data from those machines with the facility's equipment vendor in order to get repair staff out to the factory before any of them broke. In another scenario, if a company wanted to ensure it had a reliable supply of raw materials, it would have to share some of its manufacturing data with its suppliers to make sure the materials were on hand at the factory when needed.
On the machine learning (ML) side, an equipment maker might want a way to group data from machines that reside in factories owned by competing buyers. For example, in the automotive industry a vehicle's paint job is a pretty guarded secret — both in terms of how the paint is made and applied — because understanding how much paint gets used can tell a lot about the vehicle manufacturer's production. Thus, the data coming off of painting robots is sensitive.
But the company making the robots would love to get all of this data in aggregate for its own use if it could. So how can parties share this type of sensitive data? I used to think it would involve data contracts and NDAs. But it seems like Microsoft has a different idea with this new Azure service. From a job listing for the service:
"The team started as a small incubation 2 years ago and has already made a buzz within relevant industries, offering a new framework for double blind sharing, modeling, and analysis of data between two or more parties. Using this framework, parties can share raw data into a 'clean room,' apply a query, an algorithm or a ML model to the combined dataset and receive the results, but without any party seeing the other parties’ actual data. Our list of excited early adopters already includes significant players and is constantly expanding."
This isn't the exact solution for data sharing that I thought would emerge, but it's solving a problem that the industry has had for a while, and one that was bound to become more pressing once initial rollouts of IoT solutions inside plants became more widespread. Because once companies started to see returns on their investment from the low-hanging fruit of adding sensors and automation, it was only natural that they would want to go further. But doing so means sharing more data.
Now, I will say that Microsoft has been pitching ways to share data for years. As far back as 2009 I was talking to folks there about data marketplaces that never materialized. Last year, I even included data sharing as one of my failed predictions for the IoT.
But Microsoft isn't alone in pitching ways to shield data while also sharing it. In the machine learning world, there's increasingly more research being conducted on federated machine learning, where researchers try to build models on top of several clusters of data without sharing the data. To do this, researchers try to build a single model that will deliver consistent results across isolated pools of data. This could be used for building algorithms that use pools of patient data or building algorithms on top of data that must stay stored in specific geographic regions.
We're also seeing more attention being given to data masking as a way to preserve secrecy around data. Data masking includes techniques to hide the type of information being stored or transferred as well as ways to confuse observers about what that data may indicate. Encryption is the most common form of data masking, but it can go further.
For example, adding additional noise to a flow of packets from a sensor can help disguise when the sensor sends information about its state. This might be important if the sensor is monitoring whether or not a secured door is open or closed. Without additional noise, a hacker could monitor the state data and surmise that every time the sensor sent data that the door was either open or closed.
As these techniques become easier to deploy and services such as Microsoft's launch, sharing data without sharing secrets will likely become more feasible. And that will open up new use cases for the IoT and help expand the data available for training algorithms. Maybe my predictions around the need for trusted data sharing weren't wrong. Maybe they were just early.
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| Smart buttons benefit business, too |
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For the last two years, Shortcut Labs, the Swedish company behind the Flic buttons, has seen its sales to enterprises spike. Dirk Lüders, the head of partnerships at Shortcut Labs, told me that about half of the company's revenue now comes from business clients even though it's never marketed to them.
These clients range from a car company that uses the button to physically open an app on a user's phone to access the vehicle's software features to a company called MiSentinelSOS, which provides the button to workers who work alone in the field as a safety device. I was surprised to see how well the makers of a consumer device have expanded into enterprise sales with what is basically the same product, proving that a good button is essential for the IoT. |
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| — Citroën uses a Flic button with its Ami car to connect customers with their favorite features inside the “My Ami play” app. Image courtesy of Shortcut Labs. |
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Shortcut Labs has been building Bluetooth buttons since its founding in 2013. The first buttons connected to a phone and could be programmed in the Flic app to open the phone's camera app, enabling the phone's owner to take a picture with a button press. One can also use it to perform other tasks. The company added a hub that turned the Bluetooth button into a workhorse for the smart home or office.
Even with the first-generation Flic button, companies were using them to automate tasks like opening up a presentation on a dedicated computer in a conference room. Much like how I used my first button to avoid the steps associated with opening up the camera app on my phone and getting everything ready to take a picture, employees were trying to avoid the steps required to open up presentation software, then clicking through that software on a keyboard or mouse.
Generally speaking, I think that the more software eats the world, the more tactile user interfaces we need to help us manage essential features and functions. That appears to be why businesses are flocking to the Flic. To support these customers, which started coming to Shortcut Labs after playing with the Flic in their personal lives, the company has added new holders for the buttons so they can clip easily to clothing, and a custom printing deal so companies can get their logos printed on the Flic buttons.
The buttons are used in health care environments, warehouses, offices — they're even embedded into handbags by a company called Bee & Kin. In that use case, the button is used to let the handbag's owner play a song from their music app with the press of a button or carry out other pre-programmed tasks.
Lüders said that Shortcut Labs is now paying attention to the needs of business customers, and he's surprised by all of the use cases that come up. Shortcut Labs works with each company to provide the appropriate integration between the business client's software and the Flic button. For consumers, the Flic button (and the upcoming Flic Twist dial) sports dozens of pre-existing integrations to popular services such as Alexa, HomeKit, Philips Hue, Sonos, and Nanoleaf, to presets to create a fake call to help rescue you on a bad date, send a text, and more. I do wish it had a Lutron integration, but I can do most of that through Alexa.
Shortcut Labs has said it will support Matter on its upcoming new Twist dial device, and will retroactively add Matter support for its Flic Gen 2 hub after it handles everything associated with the launch of the Twist Dial in April. In that case, the Matter support will allow the hub to act as a bridge to connect to Matter devices. However, in the future I'd like to see the Matter support extend to making it easier to bring in more integrations into the buttons.
Maybe in a year or two. In the meantime, I am happy to see that Shortcut Labs has both a consumer and an enterprise revenue stream. As a button lover, I'm excited to see a company that produces them do well. |
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| Episode 407: Does the IoT mean the end of privacy? |
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This week’s show kicks off with a discussion about Carnegie Mellon’s research into detecting people’s movements through walls using Wi-Fi. As part of the discussion we also talk about the use of stick figures to protect privacy and how little trust consumers have in companies when it comes to the use of their data. That lack of trust might explain why so few consumers connect their smart appliances, or perhaps it’s simply because appliance makers don’t offer consumers a good reason. We then share the results of our audience survey about how y’all create routines. Most of y’all (86%) use a hub rather than the device application. Reliability and funding for Memfault, a startup helping companies build more reliable connected devices, is the next topic of conversation, which also features a funny smart lock failure from a fellow smart home reporter. In smaller news, we talk about a security camera that will use the new Wi-Fi HaLow standard, Google asking for opinions on Google Home, and new security settings to view Nest camera feeds. We also discuss Apple’s revamp of its botched HomeKit architecture update, and Kevin’s experience using the Apple AirPods Pro 2nd gen earbuds as a hearable device.
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| — We asked, and 79 of y’all told us what hub system you use for creating smart home routines. Apparently, a lot of y’all use Hubitat. |
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Our guest this week is Matt Rogers, the co-founder and CEO of Mill, a startup using a connected kitchen bin to fight food waste. We talk about the problem of food waste and who will pay $33 a month for the bin and concurrent service. Rogers also explains the math behind the service, and talks about why he chose to use a subscription model to fund the business. He also tells me why this isn’t a composting device, since it’s designed to keep food in the food system, and explains why that is so important. Finally, he shares how challenging it was to build a hardware startup during the pandemic. It’s a fun chat.
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This week on the IoT Podcast Hotline, we answer a listener question about how to set up a light or smart speaker notification to attract attention when an important person calls.
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| News of the Week |
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How to think about your job as a data scientist: This isn't a news brief so much as a recommendation to anyone who reads this newsletter and is interested in how to build AI models to go read this post. It's a nice overview that links software development to solving existing business problems and to how companies should think about using existing automated machine learning tools such as Amazon's SageMaker to help them automate business decisions. The goal of the post is to explain how to think about building models as a means to solve business problems, and give guidance on how to do so. I found it really helpful. (O'Reilly)
Will the CIO take over operations technology as well? This overview of a panel held earlier this month quotes Samsara's CIO predicting that because of increasing digitization, traditional operational technology roles will converge with information technology roles. That isn't new, but he adds that as this happens CIOs will take on the role of managing operations much like they do IT today. That's a pretty bold prediction, especially in industries where OT is inextricably tied to the end product, such as in physical manufacturing. (Tech Republic)
Cognizant acquires a services firm to expand in the IoT: IT consulting firm Cognizant plans to acquire Mobica, an IoT software engineering firm, for an undisclosed amount. The deal is expected to close in February, and will add about 900 employees focused on embedded software engineering to Cognizant's roster. Mobica provides services for companies working on connected devices and digital transformation, chips, and modern mobility platforms, all of which Cognizant would like to offer as the IoT becomes more enmeshed in business. (Arc Advisory Group)
Tado gets €43M in funding after failed SPAC: German smart thermostat company Tado has raised €43 million ($46.8 million) to help expand into smart energy management services. The funding comes in the wake of a failed attempt to go public via a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) last year. Tado is one of the earliest smart device companies, having formed in 2011, and it has a large presence in the European Union. In addition to adding energy management services it is also designing a thermostat for the rental market, which it plans to launch later this year. (Tech EU)
Nozomi Networks expands its IoT security monitoring to more devices: Nozomi Networks has introduced what it calls a security sensor to monitor more devices for security breaches. The Nozomi Arc isn't actually a sensor, but a software agent that will run on Microsoft, Linux, and MacOS devices at the edge, which expands the capabilities of Nozomi's IT/OT security monitoring product. The original product monitored network behavior, whereas the Arc takes that to computers and gateways inside the network. It doesn't stretch as far down as individual programmable logic controllers or other embedded OT devices, but every little bit helps. (Nozomi Networks)
Amazon's Blink has a new floodlight camera: Amazon has announced that it is now selling a new wired Blink floodlight camera for $99.99. The new camera provides 2,600 lumens of LED light and 1080p video quality, which is pretty good at that price. If buyers subscribe to Blink's monthly service they can get person detection and cloud storage as well. There is local storage on the camera for storing clips. The camera is the first Blink-branded floodlight cam with integrated lighting (prior to this, one could purchase an additional floodlight mount for Blink outdoor cameras). (Amazon)
Serbia's largest telecommunications provider builds a combined LoRaWAN and NB-IoT network: Telekom Srbija will build a Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) that uses both unlicensed LoRaWAN and licensed NB-IoT to provide connectivity. This combined network will use Actility's ThingPark Wireless LPWAN service management platform and update to Telekom Srbija's cellular network. I'm also seeing more of these combined cellular and LoRaWAN networks offered through new satellite players as opposed to traditional telcos. So maybe this will start a new trend in combined networks. (Actility)
Kevin was ready for an OTC hearing aid, but he did this instead: We've been excited about the potential for smartphones, machine learning, and better earbuds to help turn traditional earbuds into hearables. And now that the FDA has approved the sale of over-the-counter hearing aids, many companies making hearable devices are turning to making more traditional hearing aids. Kevin has played around with hearables before, and thought he might need to buy a traditional hearing aid, but he found out some tweaks to his AirPod Pro 2nd gen earbuds worked instead. (Stacey on IoT)
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