iProd recently joined the prestigious global program established by Intel called Intel® IoT Market Ready Solutions. It is a catalog of 'turnkey' IoT Solutions, immediately deployable to solve specific industrial problems, pre-integrated, scalable and repeatable that incorporate 'edge' devices (hardware and software), cloud connectivity, cybersecurity and analytics.
We interviewed Paolo Righi (Intel's EMEA Lead Market Development Manager) with whom we pleasantly discussed Intel's position in the Industrial IoT market, the interest of the American microchips giant in the iProd solution and the commitment in the immediate future of Intel's offer in a market increasingly open to flexible, robust and scalable solutions where the combination of hardware and software is a competitive factor for companies that ride the disruptive wave of digital transformation.
There is a strong interest of companies in the IoT business, what is Intel's position?
IoT is now particularly interesting in Smart Factories, digitally enhanced factories, where it is essential for 'intelligent' production. This market is estimated to reach around 400 billion dollars in 2025 from the current 220 billion dollars, with an average annual growth rate of over 12%. So an extremely interesting opportunity for Intel and its partners to provide solutions in multiple applications such as automated defect recognition and predictive maintenance to improve efficiency and quality, redefining workforce priorities, speeding up production, increasing profit margins, reducing operating costs and scraps to the full advantage of sustainability and safety objectives.
How did the collaboration between IPROD and Intel come about?
Several years ago, observing the various IoT applications in the different market segments, it was evident that IoT solutions were often difficult to be implemented and also unique, in the sense of being optimized on particular processes and end-user specifications. In other words, excellent tailor-made solutions but not 'commercially' available and scalable.
Hence Intel's idea to increase collaboration with leading companies in the IoT, which are part of the Intel® Partner Alliance program, by developing and creating a catalog of IoT Solutions called MRS (Intel® IoT Market Ready Solutions) immediately deployable to solve specific problems, pre-integrated, scalable and repeatable by integrating 'edge' devices (hardware and software), cloud connectivity, cybersecurity and analytics.
And hence the collaboration with IPROD, an Industry 4.0 platform that allows companies in the manufacturing sector to increase productivity and quality and their capacity to be integrated along the entire supply-chain through an innovative pay-as-you-go model based on Cloud, available as Intel MRS.
What awaits us in the immediate future?
The future is Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence everywhere! The collaboration with software developers based on Artificial Intelligence (AI ISVs) is important as is the case with AiProd, the first application of Acoustic Artificial Intelligence integrated into manufacturing. AiProd is conceived and patented by IPROD, to make available practical applications optimized on Intel architecture that offer immediate business results to users by making services more flexible, robust and scalable. The Intel software offer is vast - says Righi - in particular I would like to highlight Intel oneAPI, a programming model that crosses CPU, GPU, FPGA, and Intel OpenVINO, an open-source tool for optimizing and implementing Inference applications. As far as the Intel offer is concerned, new products are always offered with particular attention to the specific needs of the IoT market: virtualization, real time, functional safety, effective balance between edge and cloud computing, cybersecurity, etc. with the objective of maintaining in the long term previous technologies as required by the manufacturing sector.
