Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has opened a new IoT Innovation Lab in Geneva, Switzerland. It is designed to help customers make use of the large amounts of data generated by devices, machines, assets and sensors working at the network edge. As an HPE spokesman tells, IoT Now‘s editorial director, Jeremy Cowan, the edge is anywhere outside data centres.
The latest of four HPE IoT Innovation Labs globally, the Geneva lab provides a collaborative environment to conceptualise, develop and test advanced IoT and edge-to-cloud solutions that drive business outcomes like operational efficiency, safety, revenue growth and long-term competitive advantage. Jeremy Cowan reports from Geneva.
According to Gartner, “by 2022, as a result of digital business projects, 75% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the traditional, centralised data centre or cloud, up from less than 10% in 2018.1
“The exponential data growth at the edge holds a huge opportunity for advancing our economies and societies – however, organisations currently only capitalise on a fraction of that data,” says Volkhard Bregulla, vice president Global Manufacturing, Automotive and IoT, HPE. “Realising this opportunity requires a complex transformation involving technology, people and economics. Our IoT Innovation Labs are a key tool to initiate, shape and accelerate each customer’s unique IoT journey.”
HPE’s IoT Innovation Lab in Geneva offers hands-on environments and real-world examples where customers and partners can discover the business value of HPE’s and its partners’ enterprise IoT portfolio. This includes immersive Edge Experience Zones that enable customers to digitally interact with “things” in their natural settings, featuring practical IoT use cases for industries such as oil & gas, manufacturing, engineering, healthcare, retail, smart city and more.
Together with HPE’s nearby HPC and AI Centre of Excellence in Grenoble, France, the IoT Innovation Lab in Geneva provides a proof-of-concept environment to test the newest IoT technologies with customers’ software and test data. Customers can benchmark applications and experiment securely and confidentially across many use cases
“Collaborative innovation is at the heart of our IoT Innovation Labs, with the goal to deliver material business outcomes,” says Dr. Tom Bradicich, vice president and general manager, Converged Servers, Edge and IoT Systems, HPE. “These are not only places to demonstrate or test solutions – they are places to provoke thinking about the possibilities, and then come together to build and deploy the next generation of IoT and intelligent edge solutions.”
IoT use cases help envision and realise business outcomes
Driving business outcomes with IoT requires not only new technologies and expertise in areas like edge infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI), wired and wireless networking, security, location services, augmented reality and edge-to-cloud architectures but also viable use cases that deliver short-term results and help drive a strategic IoT innovation road map.
The IoT use cases demonstrated at the IoT Innovation Lab in Geneva help customers envision opportunities to reach their business goals, conceptualise IoT use cases for their enterprises, and eventually implement proofs of concepts and projects. Examples of use cases demonstrated at the IoT Innovation Lab in Geneva include:
Accelerate Machine Learning at the edge to automate quality assurance in high-tech manufacturing:
HPE Pointnext demonstrates a solution that enables automated and extremely precise defect detection of finished products in high-tech manufacturing, based on video analytics and Machine Learning (ML). It significantly accelerates the time to train ML algorithms by employing innovative image-analytics methods and by running the analysis right at the edge, based on HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems.
Among others, the solution is deployed at Foxconn’s production lines for HPE systems in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic. The Geneva IoT Innovation Lab features a conveyor belt where visitors can experience and test how the video-analytics solution detects defects of computer hardware
OT-IT convergence increases productivity in auto manufacturing:
Automotive manufacturers today use multiple test and measurement systems for factory in-line automated testing and engineering development – a complex, error-prone and expensive setup. One auto manufacturing company saw the opportunity to significantly increase productivity by consolidating separate components into a single system.
The company deployed the HPE Edgeline OT Link Platform, which converges operational technology (OT) – such as CAN bus, data acquisition, and OT control systems – with enterprise-grade IT infrastructure at the edge, for example, on the manufacturing floor. At the IoT Innovation Lab in Geneva, HPE demonstrates this solution with a car door controlled and monitored via an HPE Edgeline EL300 Converged Edge System.
Monetisation of vehicle data:
HPE demonstrates a prototype solution, implemented with an Audi Q2, that provides a secure process for the sharing of and payment for a vehicle’s sensor data based on “smart contracts.”
Built on blockchain technology and an edge-to-cloud architecture, the solution allows vehicle owners to earn money or get rewards by driving while controlling with whom they share data. In addition, third parties enjoy access to a valuable data pool for purposes of driver assistance, customer targeting or any other mobility service.
Smart venues drive business outcomes:
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, demonstrates how IoT technology helps transform experiences at physical venues like offices, retail stores, hospitals, or cities, to reach goals like higher employee productivity, improved safety, optimised processes and revenue growth.
As an example, the Geneva IoT Innovation Lab features a smart office equipped with Aruba Wi-Fi and wired networks, Aruba Beacons, and Aruba Meridian location-based services, all integrated with office and business applications.
Using the Meridian-powered mobile app, visitors can quickly find their way to rooms, and based off the visitors’ presence, the meeting room will automatically activate various workflows. For example, once the visitor arrives in the room, the location is marked as occupied in the mobile app, and the system automatically launches a Skype or Zoom meeting.
Ensure security and service quality in IoT environments:
The continued growth of edge and IoT creates new challenges for enterprises to deliver the best user experience and to ensure the security of IoTenabled infrastructures. At the Geneva IoT Innovation Lab, Aruba demonstrates solutions to solve the IoT security challenges, including Aruba IntroSpect, an AI-based Machine Learning security software that detects small changes in device behaviour that are often indicative of cyber-attacks that have evaded traditional security defenses.
The solution is used by Cadence Design Systems and other large organisations globally. Additionally, Aruba will also have a Service Assurance solution from its Cape Networks acquisition that helps IT departments to get in front of service issues before they occur for users and IoT devices. It runs continuous simulated tests to monitor network connectivity, network services, authentication, captive portal response, cloud and internal applications in critical locations like office spaces, production plants, retail, healthcare, and similar types of environments.
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