As the world’s leading provider of semiconductor intellectual property, Arm is in a unique position to help secure the tens of billions of devices that will be coming to the Internet of Things. And in light of the numerous high profile security breaches that have occurred over the past year, it should come as no surprise that security was the major focus of the 2017 Arm TechCon conference in Santa Clara, CA. Read more

VDC headed out to Las Vegas last week to grab a seat at SAP’s annual developer conference, TechED 2017. SAP held the conference in the massive Palazzo convention center, with the focus of the conference centered on SAP platform developer education and outreach. CTO Bjoern Boerke kicked off the conference with a Star Trek themed keynote, introducing his crew of speakers in the classic attire of the USS Enterprise. Bjoern states that a small team at SAP chose the theme to convey the bold move to “boldly go where no man has gone before” and lay the foundation for today’s SAP Cloud Platform. Read more

Device management is part of the foundation of an IoT solution. “Device management” is also an overly simplified term in light of the IoT where preserving embedded software and security integrity means greater control throughout the lifecycle. However, enabling scalable and secure IoT device management today still requires a fair amount of engineering time and investments to build – even on top of “building blocks” provided by IoT and cloud services providers. Device management and monitoring are not functions that translate easily between connected device classes, vendors, and use cases but remain critical to all of them. Read more

Industrial PCs (IPCs) are evolving and gaining more market traction from the Internet of Things to enable connected applications and services. IPCs are by no means new but the growing IoT solution requirements for distributed processing, connectivity, and security are breathing new life into the device class. Beyond more traditional embedded control applications, IPCs are helping fill the gap between intelligent “things” and edge servers or the cloud. Read more

The network edge is a critical element to enabling 5G applications and services. While no one knows for certain which mix of 5G technologies, frameworks, and standards will be at the core of next generation networks, the edge is an area brimming with market opportunities today. Trends such as Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and Fog Computing are causing OEMs, service providers, network operators, and others throughout the IoT and embedded ecosystem to reevaluate their network architectures and data models to position themselves on the front lines of competitive differentiation and services delivery. Read more

Most people probably know that Japan-based Hitachi is a large corporation, but they probably don’t realize just how large it is. In its fiscal year ended March 31, 2017, Hitachi Ltd. had worldwide revenues of 9.16 trillion Japanese yen (about US$82 billion), making it one of that nation’s 10 largest companies. Larger than Sony, Panasonic, Softbank, or many other well-known Japanese technology brands. Hitachi is also old, founded back in 1910, originally to produce electric motors. Read more

At the inaugural Mobile World Congress Americas trade show and conference (formerly the CTIA Wireless show), attendees wound their way around the ongoing construction at San Francisco’s Moscone Center to find an event notable smaller than its MWC mother event in Barcelona. Nevertheless, IoT-related products, services, and conference sessions were prominent and plentiful. Read more

The Internet of Things is now a staple of competitive strategies for both embedded platforms and IT solutions alike. The recent merger of Kontron, a leading global provider of embedded technology, with S&T Deutschland Holding AG (S&T) is critical to the company regaining its foothold in the market. Kontron designs and manufactures embedded boards and systems spanning a swath of form factors. The company is a pioneer in the computer-on-modules market and remained the leading global supplier in 2016. Read more

Apple released its long-anticipated AR tracking and recognition SDK, ARKit, at its 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) last Monday. Many in the AR industry had anticipated the release for quite some time, given Apple’s 2015 acquisition of leading AR SDK provider Metaio – a German company incubated within Volkswagen in 2003. Until last week, Apple had remained content to play at the mobile hardware, OS, and application distribution levels, shuttering all licensing of Metaio’s SDK and tracking solutions, along with the popular insideAR conference that Metaio had organized since 2006. Read more

We were in Austin, Texas this week for National Instruments’ annual conference, which brings together thousands of engineers, scientists, and industry professionals from a variety of backgrounds. NIWeek is a showcase of how the organization is accelerating development and increasing productivity in test, measurement, and control systems using its platforms. This year’s show was full of exciting new announcements and customer demonstrations of new technologies at the forefront of 5G and the Industrial Internet of Things. Read more