Our connected world is increasingly populated with smart equipment and devices. As convergence of these continues, we are seeing the rise of connected edge devices and greater intelligence at the edge.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is changing our world, including our development and strategies for building equipment, devices and applications. IoT is presenting tremendous new opportunities for creating, operating and servicing and is leading the way for updated business value delivery. Business operations are becoming "smart" by being connected further out on the edge. The full range of possibilities created by IoT continues to grow and is now being realized by enterprises across the world. The impacts of these technologies are fundamentally revolutionizing the way products are created today and how enterprises do business.

IoT is contributing to a significant shift in the way people acquire information, interact with each other, and make decisions. It is enabling us to expand our reach to a range of devices that can gather and analyze physical data and react to that data in a variety of applications that we’ve never seen before.
The Internet of Things is enabling us to move from connected devices to connected intelligence; it is allowing us to redistribute and process data independently at the edge device level and within the Cloud enabling real-time decision making at the network edge.

Data normalization, business intelligence and API management requirements are being pushed farther to the edge of the network. Equipment and devices are becoming more intelligent and gateways are enabling the efficient transmission of data by connecting legacy and new infrastructure to each other and to the Cloud. Equipment is becoming more digitized and more connected, establishing networks between machines, humans, and the internet and creating new ecosystems.

Connecting to and communicating with all aspects of these systems and devices is critical in today’s dynamic business environment. Putting more intelligence and more memory at the edge provides new opportunities for new services, analytics, better warranty data and the ability to access critical information directly. Furthermore, the proliferation of new intelligent devices, equipment, solutions and services based on IoT technology is leading to the flattening of the network architecture and equipment and devices that are connected directly to IP networks. This in turn, is allowing for more streamlined connectivity between systems and the re-distribution and exchange of the ever-increasing amount of smart data that is inherent in devices and equipment at the device level.

Advancements in technology for equipment OEMs are fundamentally shifting the competitive business landscape by providing new opportunities to create and deliver value. Data from connected products, devices and sensors is powering new innovative applications, enhancing business processes, enriching customer processes, and delivering new insights of information.

Today’s market leaders understand that the value of connecting equipment and the collection of accurate data for driving cost-savings, increased customer satisfaction, brand differentiation, and increased revenues. This transformation from isolated systems to Internet-enabled equipment and devices that can network and communicate with each other and with the Cloud is generating unprecedented opportunities for enhanced productivity and efficiency, improved real-time decision making and innovative user experiences. Central to this is the ability to securely connect, interact and integrate equipment and sensor data with core business systems, and applications and turn this data into smart data that is valuable and can easily be accessed and securely used.