SAP to expand Leonardo Centers globally and roll out vertical tools

SAP highlights IoT at Leonardo Live

SAP highlighted its SAP Leonardo “system of innovation” at its first North American Leonardo Live event in Chicago this week, showcasing customers and products. SAP Leonardo is a sort of umbrella term for SAP IoT-related products that include an IoT platform, edge computing capabilities, machine learning, blockchain technologies and analytics capabilities.

At the event, SAP announced plans to expand its Leonardo Centers – in which customers can deploy working IoT prototypes in as little as eight weeks – globally and revealed new packaged products and services for vertical IoT use cases in life sciences, mining, and oil and gas. It also showed off its edge computing capabilities, announcing that SAP Leonardo IoT Edge is being used to capture the biometric data of the crew of the AkzoNobel sailboat participating in the Volvo Ocean Race, sailing’s toughest team challenge and one of the sport’s Big Three events (alongside the Olympics and America’s Cup). “The edge computing topic is super important,” said SAP’s Hans Thalbauer, senior vice president for digital supply chain and IoT, in an interview. “Edge computing truly means I make decisions locally. There is not a single manufacturing company [that is] not asking about this.”

Survey says? Businesses want IoT regulation

Lack of external guidance is a challenge to securing IoT devices, and businesses overwhelmingly believe there should be IoT security regulation, according to a recent survey released by Gemalto and conducted by independent market research firm Vanson Bourne. Of the 1,050 IT and business decision-makers surveyed globally, 96% said there should be government regulation. That regulation should include who is responsible for securing data at each stage of the journey and the implications of noncompliance, respondents said. Gemalto is a global digital security company based in Amsterdam.

Pitney Bowes and Arrow Electronics partner on IoT

Pitney Bowes and Arrow Electronics will partner to build a solution that leverages Pitney Bowes’ Confirm Intelligent Infrastructure Management and the Arrow Connect platform to process and analyze IoT-generated data captured through infrastructure sensors, according to a press release. The aim is to enable public sector authorities to securely gather, process and analyze data collected through IoT devices to improve physical infrastructure efficiencies.

Intel IoT growth soaring

Intel reported record revenue from its IoT Group at its recent third-quarter earnings announcement, according to coverage in Business Insider. The story reports that key factors driving that revenue growth are the growth in Intel’s IoT services and key customer segments in retail, industrial and video. In July, Intel announced layoffs in IoT-related groups and the discontinuation of development on certain IoT chip modules. 

In other “X” news

A certain version “10” wasn’t the only one getting attention this week. Microsoft published information on its Fall Creators Update edition of Windows 10 IoT. Updates include several enhancements that aim to ease the work of developers in building IoT solutions. The update also includes enhancements to management capabilities. There is also a preview of new Windows 10 IoT functionality that users can evaluate in development, which includes, among other things, functionality that simplifies the integration between Windows 10 IoT and Azure IoT.