Intel’s IoT drivers

MUMBAI, INDIA: IoT, the latest buzzword in the IT industry, is one of the key focus areas for Intel as well. Satish Jadhav, Director, IoT, Embedded Sales Group, Intel South Asia, discusses the key trends and growth drivers in an interview with CIOL.

How big is the IoT opportunity for Intel in India?

There is a huge opportunity in the ever-evolving IoT space. In the past 10-15 years, the cost of sensors have gone down by almost 10 times along with the cost of connectivity by around 40X and the cost of compute platform by nearly 60X. This is what is driving this whole evolution called IoT.

Intel has been a player in the server, data center and overall compute space with industry leading technology driving innovation. Over years Intel has evolved from a classic semiconductor company to a company offering end-to-end solutions in hardware, software and services which is the fundamental framework for IoT.

How is Intel leveraging this opportunity?

Internet of Things (or IoT) will get a major push in India through the 100 smart cities initiative taken-up by the Union government.

In line with its global engagement Intel is targeting industrial, energy, transport, retail and e-governance as focus verticals for IoT. Our focus is to build a local eco system of partners including system integrators, OEM’s, ISV’s along with our global ODM partners who will help scale the solutions locally and drive standardization.

Intel has also started Innovate for Digital India challenge where we provide a platform to young entrepreneurs and innovators by providing them MVP (Minimum Viable Products) based on Intel architecture and driving the innovation in country.

Which are the technologies from the Intel stable you are banking on?

Quark – Core: We have introduced Intel Quark, a tiny chip for smooth functioning of Internet of things (IoT) and wearable computing. We have also Intel core for various mid-range to high-end consumer and business microprocessors.

In other words, the actual CPU core inside a Quark chip is one-fifth the size and consumes one-tenth the power of an Atom CPU core. Quark is aimed at markets where power consumption and form factor take priority.

The Intel Xeon which was supported by Wind River to address new subscriber features while maximizing network performance, meet the storage demands by reducing overall capacity requirements, and tackle security threats in real time without losing performance.

Wind River Intelligent Device Platform XT: is a scalable, sustainable, and secure development environment for the development and deployment of IoT gateways and plays an integral role in the Intel IoT Gateway. The platform enables developers to rapidly build secure, enterprise-grade intelligent systems for IoT.

Some uses cases are mentioned below:

• Connectivity: Connect any intelligent device from aircraft engines to autonomous vehicles and beyond.

• Manageability: Maintain and update deployed equipment remotely, extending lifespan and slashing maintenance costs.

• Security: Verify system integrity at the hardware level to protect critical data throughout the device lifecycle.

• Run-time environments: Quickly build portable, scalable, and reusable gateway applications for IoT

McAfee – e2e device & application level security: With Intel's RealSense technology in smart phones, users will be able to operate their handsets using gestures and even facial expressions. They will interact with their devices just like they interact with people.

Intel is also looking to expand its presence in big data and analytics and has made significant investments in Cloudera. The collaboration with Cloudera is also expected to enhance both Intel data center and IoT initiatives by enabling customers to manage and analyze machine-generated data from a variety of sources, spanning sensors to gateways and a range of devices.

Can you provide specific examples around IoT?

Intel is betting big on the government's Digital India vision as it has launched quite a few initiatives including programs, training modules, applications and devices for common masses.

Intel has already deployed end-to-end IOT solutions in public distribution system and intelligent transport system working with its eco system partners in India.

For instance, Intel is currently working with the state of Karnataka –the Public Distribution System that the government drives is probably one of the largest distribution networks globally as per some reports. Intel’s role here is to work with system integrators to develop an integrated, connected, intelligent solution which is a combination of electronic weighing scale and point- of-sale terminal. It gives real time visibility in terms of actual stock level or disbursement level in a particular fair price shop.

There is a huge opportunity coming across different verticals. First is industrial, which includes all the asset management, factory automation and technical vertical. Second is retail automation that includes everything from point-of-sale signages to the new government initiative of having a uniform GST spread across India.

The third is the e-governance services. The government’s smart city initiative will also play a major role as an enabler for an intelligently connected ecosystem. IoT is meant for improving the services, bringing efficiency in the system and driving better statistics for the consumers.

Intel has been conducting IoT hackathons. What has been the response?

With the fundamental objective of getting the ecosystem ready to implement IoT based solutions, Intel has been conducting IoT conventions in Hackathon style. IoT is a huge opportunity and software plays a key role as a catalyst in enabling smarter solutions.

The Intel IoT road show provides a platform to young and enthusiastic makers and hobbyists to demonstrate their creativity by using Intel Edison boards.

These hackathon’s are open to all including makers, IoT start-ups, developers, students and hardware novices. The participants get a free Intel IoT Developer Kit which includes an Intel development board. The Dev-kit is based on Intel architecture and designed to be hardware and software pin-compatible with Arduino. It is also well-equipped with sensors, software and accessories to stimulate one’s creativity.

What would be two to three focus areas of Intel going forward?

IoT is definitely one of the fastest growing business segments for Intel. There is a lot of scope in this space to drive new initiatives in different industry verticals. Intel’s strategy here is to move beyond the hardware play.

Considering the upgrades in the IoT landscape, there is huge amount of data that is being created irrespective of the vertical, which means the big data market is really getting more active. From the demand perspective India is going to see a huge amount of data explosion. The big data revolution will play a very important role here.

We, at Intel are ready to foster the big data ecosystem in India through a broad collaboration with our partners and building partnerships with various ecosystem players. Our strategy is to combine our hardware, software and services assets to solve the customer challenges in deploying IoT solutions.