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Next Era of IoT: ERP to Control Devices in Field

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S Aadeetya
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At a time when many doubt the Internet of Things (IOT) as just setting up an additional dashboard, SAP is thinking otherwise and has big dreams about IOT. The leading enterprise platform provider seek to leverage IOT to create an automated environments that are controlled by ERP Systems.

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"The next era of IOT will be when ERP systems can automatically control the devices in the field," reveals Dinesh Sharma, VP (Marketing) Internet of Things at SAP.

However, there is no single company today that can deliver complete IOT stack. "We believe we have tremendous assets in event streaming, real-time analytics, automation of processes which puts us in the top end of the stack of IOT enablers. Our partnership with Erricson, CISCO and other companies is all about how we bring best devices, sensors, carriers on the platform and create a best in the breed ecosystem. We are not going to do all these end-to-end ourselves.

You need backend support from ISPs

"The carriers have to bring the data and we are going to help in utilizing the data," Sharma stated. According to IOT marketing head, IOT is nothing but Connection between people, processes data and things. "We believe these four elements is what characterizes the IOT," he elaborates. Sharma elaborates that even before the term IOT was coined, SAP had been working on monitoring equipment and automation from almost 10 years. The company already provides Manufacturing Intelligence Integration(MII) solution. Though the solution does not have the capability of connecting to Internet, it allows the users to automate within the confines of a factory i.e control machinery directly from the ERP systems.

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"IoT can just takes this the new level", he adds. One of the use cases for IOT is the ability to understand and pro-actively watch what's happening. And one the things driving this is if you have multi-million dollar equipment you dont mind putting up sensors worth $2,000. IOT today is all about sensors. People are buying equipment that has sensors in it. It up to the companies to use data for their benefit or risk not scaling up their efficiencies.

So it's not a choice of buying systems with sensors, the systems are coming with sensors, either one is going to adopt solutions to use them or not. Where the SAP comes into the equation is we believe the elements of IOT is monitoring, analyzing and automating. Lot of people speak about IOT as just setting up a dashboard, sending SMS to people. "Setting up dashboards is one thing but you dont get operational efficiencies unless you integrate it into business process and work flow. This is what SAP does", the SAP's IOT marketing VP explains.

SAP's strategy for future

We have 2,500 customers and penetration in most industrial corporations in the world. Mining, Oil & Gas, Transportation, Retail, Consumer Product Goods are looking at Internet of Things to archive the next level of efficiency to provide better services, better capabilities and also price to their shareholders. On the strategy to take IOT to market, Sharma claims that nearly every global 500 corporation has some kind of relation with SAP. What we are hearing from some of those organizations is they are looking at Internet of Things as providing new levels of capabilities and services. IoT can mean many things to different people.

Large industrial organizations already have been dealing with high value assets that have been monitored from years.If you think of Oil & Gas industry, they have multi-million dollar assets. Those companies already understand the value of monitoring their equipment (Though they may not call it IoT). It's easier for such organizations to extend that to additional pieces of equipment to get a holistic view of their assets. So, our strategy is to focus on five key industries initially - that is Oil and Gas, Mining, Transportation and Logistics, Manufacturing and Retail and consumer products.

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