Gitex Global: Interview with Rami Kichli, VP – Gulf and Levant, Software AG

What are the key aspects to consider before investing in IoT?

It is clear that IoT sets the tone for the future and hence is on every organisation’s radar. Therefore, it becomes imperative for organisations to formulate a robust strategy utilising this technology to emerge as a disruptive leader in the industry.

The first step is to discover and garner in-depth understanding of physical assets before investing in IoT for greatest value. Asset-intensive industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing or transportation are generally challenged with how to maximise the value of assets, ones they own, or could own in the future. Resources have to be prioritised based on business-critical assets.

The next step is to understand and engage in a structured ideation process where entities identify desirable, viable and feasible solutions for implementation, in line with the company’s core strengths and strategic direction. This is where organisations start to reimagine how data generated by physical assets, can positively impact business – increase efficiencies, introduce new revenue streams, elevate customer service etc. – creating a good insurance for business growth, advancement and stability. For example: if there are sensors built into pipeline of an oil and gas firm, the information derived could help in continuously improve planning for subsequent operations and reduce expensive equipment use.

It is after all the processes above, where IoT has great potential to provide the most effective solution for business efficiency hurdles and elevate a business function or reimagine the whole business.

To summarise, ideation and planning with a concrete strategy is vital to ensure success with IoT.

Why are businesses struggling to adapt to the demands of IoT adoption?

The technology is considered as the basis of a new industrial transformation – industry 4.0 and is key in digital transformation of organisations and cities. With this in mind, businesses tend to view IoT as the objective and then tend to claim its deployment, to ride the IoT euphoria. This is the primary reason for its failure. When entities skip the ‘ideation’ and ‘strategy’ phase, the struggle and failure is inevitable.

The technology is currently in its ‘hype’ phase, like any other new technology. Roadblocks and misunderstandings are gradually fading away and challenges are getting resolved, thereby creating an innate need for customers to adopt IoT quickly. The rush for is clearly increasing and an increasing number of organisations want to get this technology on board. With this fast-tracking approach, strategy, end goal and use case selection are often overlooked which leads to the lack of ROI driven use cases in areas of smarter and more efficient systems, and business innovation.

The struggle will erode. It will gradually fade out as more leading entities derive industry-specific use cases that will eventually go mainstream with IoT, then transforming it into the post-hype adoption cycles as a hero technology in the coming years.

What further progress is required to unlock full potential of emerging technologies and develop robust capabilities?

The natural evolution of uses cases is becoming more mainstream with the reference building over a period as use cases and projects become known, giving rise to increased industrial adoption. All technologies have evolved in this manner and IoT is no different.

To accelerate adoption and unlock full potential, regular conversations and partnerships between industry and technology players will uncover and yield future use cases to positively impact industries for their transformation into game changers within their sector. IoT enables connected enterprise ecosystems to gather and analyse data for business use and can be clubbed with emerging technologies such as AI, Blockchain etc. to unlock increased potential. Hence, a structured IoT adoption will lead to newer use cases that will go mainstream across the entire ecosystem.

At this year’s Gitex Global, visitors to the Software AG booth will be able to witness IoT uses cases including ones developed by university students under Software AG’s ‘Future Disruptors Award’. These include a smart parking system, social distancing detector and a digitalised hotel check-in system. The showcase also include a gamified Smart Bike built with IoT and Edge capabilities combined. This will convert data into value by analysing the rider’s information such as posture impact on cycling speed, and other KPIs such as average speed, power and total distance, reiterating how IoT and Ai can also help in sporting endeavors.