Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: Internet of Things

Posts relating to the internet of things, IoT and M2M technologies

  • Navigating a platform shift

    Navigating a platform shift

    One of the companies that defined the desktop computing revolution in the 1990s was Autodesk.

    The company’s AutoCAD program bought Computer Aided Design to the masses and probably was the single main reason for the extinction of the drawing board in design offices.

    In the post-PC world Autodesk itself is having to deal with a dramatically changed market as software moves onto the cloud, workplaces become more collaborative and the computing world becomes based upon mobile devices rather than static desktop computers.

    As Autodesk’s Asia Pacific Senior Vice President, Pat Williams, described at the Autodesk University Extension in Sydney today there are three major disruptions happening to industry in general; to production, consumption and connections.

    Disrupting design

    “Technology and expectations are empowering users and disrupting how things are made,” Williams told the audience as he demonstrated Autodesk’s range of design, simulation and rendering tools that the company hopes will keep it ahead of a rapidly changing marketplace.

    “How we make things and bring them to market is changing,” says Williams. “We simply don’t design, manufacture or even imagine the as-built environment as we have in the past.”

    “The other thing that’s changing is how we connect and share ideas, which changes the way we create. No longer is the lone designer a reality we can live with any more.”

    Along with connections between workers changing production and consumers sharing their experiences creating new consumption patterns, Williams also sees the connectivity between devices and materials as changing the way things are designed and manufactured.

    “The way things connect with each other interconnect and relate is deeper than ever before. It’s getting easier to create complex systems that talk to each other and the design and physical use depends upon their interconnectivity.”

    Williams echoes the ideas of designer Gadi Amit and materials engineer Skylar Tibbits on how smart materials are going to change manufacturing and design.

    3D printing drives change

    One of the big drivers of change in the design industry is 3D printing that allows both more complex components to be manufactured and will change some industries — most notably the construction industry as bricklaying, concrete pouring and formwork can be done by large scale printing.

    Given the influence of the 3D printing, it’s not surprising that Autodesk have launched a hundred million dollar investment fund to help startups leverage the new technologies.

    As one of the companies that benefited from the desktop PC revolution, Autodesk are finding themselves having to adapt to a very different marketplace. Their cloud based products will need to be nimble to succeed to in a very demanding and volatile marketplace.

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  • Maintaining the BlackBerry ecosystem: A review of the Passport smartphone

    Maintaining the BlackBerry ecosystem: A review of the Passport smartphone

    “Man, it’s a BlackBerry!” Exclaimed the assistant at the T-Mobile store on San Francisco’s Financial District, “I haven’t seen one of those in years.”

    Generally that was the reaction in taking a BlackBerry around; a lot of bemused comments along with the the odd wistful reminiscence, usually from a forty something lawyer or banker, about how they used to love their BlackBerry back in the day.

    So is the Passport is enough to rekindle Blackberry’s fortunes, or at least keep the company going until CEO John Chen can execute his Internet of Things strategy around QNX?

    The BlackBerry Passport is an unusual device; with a square screen it’s a very different mobile phone that takes a little getting used to.

    An irony for this reviewer is the tactile keyboard, with soft keyboards now the norm for smartphones, going back to a ‘real’ keyboard takes some getting used to and the Passport suffers from the real estate taken up by the keys.

    A return to two thumb typing

    The layout of the keyboard also takes some getting used to with the three row tactile QWERTY layout requiring two thumbs to use, compared to the one fingered swipe or typing options available on Android or Apple phones.

    Only having three rows also presents a problem for inexperienced users — where are all the punctuation keys? The answer is they appear on the screen above while typing. While a bit clunky, the predictive software which determines which punctuation you’ll need works well.

    Adding to the predictive typing features is a suggested word box that appears as you type, as one becomes more experienced in using the device this becomes a very efficient way to get messages out quickly. Overall BlackBerry has done a good job on designing the phone’s typing functions to get the most out of the form factor.

    Blackberry-passport-handset

    Another learning curve for users are the swipe functions, where an up gesture brings up the home screen and swipes to the the left and right let you navigate between screens and apps.

    The main app on the phone is the BlackBerry Hub, a centralised repository for all information. The aim of the hub is bring together email, social media and text messages into one fixed location.

    Bringing together information like this is always problematic as many of us are receiving dozens, if not hundreds, of emails, texts and social media messages a day. Overall though the Hub handles them well and integrates nicely with the major social media services including Twtitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

    The Appstore weakness

    Where the software falls down is when venturing outside the pre-packaged apps — while things are better than they were, BlackBerry’s devices still suffer from a sparse app store.

    The lack of a suitable WordPress app prevented this reviewer from testing out the device’s blogging potential which is a shame as the 1:1 aspect screen may well have proved to be better than the Apple and Samsung equivalents.

    In the case of social media Instagram is a good example with the only free app, iGram, only offering Facebook and Twitter integration; a limitation that betrays the device’s excellent 13 Megapixel camera.

    On the other important hardware matters, the phone’s battery gives well over a days life on heavy use, the company claims 24 hours talk time, and recharges through a standard Micro USB connector.

    The decent battery life is reflected in the weight of the device with it tipping the scales at 196g, compared  to the Samsung Galaxy 5’s 145g and the Apple iPhone 6 plus’ 172g. It’s not heavy by any means which shows some of the engineering BlackBerry has applied to the phone.

    Inside the device is 32Mb of storage with the capacity to add up to 128Mb Micro SD memory, alongside the memory slot is the Nano SIM holder which worked well on both the US T-Mobile and Australian Optus 4G networks.

    Maintaining the ecosystem

    Unfortunately we were unable to review how well the device and its software integrated with the Black Enterprise Service as this is going to be the main selling point for the Passport.

    Overall the BlackBerry Passport is a good corporate phone that’s going to appeal to organisations that wants to give their staff secure communications with smartphone capabilities.

    However the handset itself is unlikely to appeal to the broader smartphone market. At best the BlackBerry Passport is an attempt to keep the company’s core market locked into the ecosystem while John Chen executes his pivot into new markets. It may not be enough.

    In San Francisco’s Financial District, the guys at the T-Mobile shop are probably not going to see many more BlackBerry phones.

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  • Where next for the telco industry?

    Where next for the telco industry?

    The last thirty years have been good for the telecommunications industry; a wave of privatisations, regulatory reforms and technological change drove the sector and company profits.

    As populations around the world adopted mobile phones users started enthusiastically calling and texting, Telco profits exploded.

    Twenty years later the massive growth to the industry has peaked as customers have moved to using their cellphones for  less lucrative data services.

    So where do the telecommunications companies go next for growth and profit? Today and tomorrow I’m attending the Ovum 2020 Telecoms Summit where they’re looking at the future for the industry.

    Salvation from the internet of things

    The great white hope for the telco industry is the internet of things and the machine to machine (M2M) technologies; the hope being that putting SIM cards into every car, kettle and shipping container that this will be another lucrative revenue stream.

    Martin Creighan, Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand at AT&T, points out that by the end of the decade there will be seven times as many connected devices as live mobile phones. This is where the opportunity lies.

    The problem with the M2M vision is annual revenues per user (ARPU) for connected devices are a fraction of those from voice and messaging over the last twenty years and telcos will need more than that to maintain their revenues, let alone grow.

    Moving into the cloud

    One of the other revenue streams is adding cloud services, again this is a low margin business and involves competing with global giants like Amazon and Google along with the myriad of specialist companies.

    Another possibility is in providing professional services as Jennifer Douglas, Director of Fixed voice and platinum for Telstra, described in the company’s home support product.

    The problem with both the cloud and professional services model this requires a change in culture for the telcos, the traditional contempt telecommunications executives have for the end user doesn’t cut it in the professional services and cloud computing industries.

    For the telcos, this major change is something that’s been experienced by many other industries. That a comparatively protected industry like telecommunications companies are subject to these disruptions illustrates just how no sector is safe from being uprnded.

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  • Google moves deeper into the smarthome

    Google moves deeper into the smarthome

    Since Google bought smart smoke detector company Nest earlier this year it’s become apparent that the search engine giant sees the smarthome as one of its big marketplaces in the near future.

    Nest’s acquisition of smarthome automation company Revolv yesterday illustrates this and shows that Nest is Google’s smarthome division.

    As the smarthome becomes more common, the value of controlling the systems that run the connected home’s devices becomes greater. So the positions being taken by Apple, Google and Samsung are going to be important as the marketplace develops.

    The latter relationship — Google and Samsung — is particularly fascinating as Samsung’s smartphones and tablets are locked into the Google Android system which makes it harder for the Korean industrial giant to strike off in an independent path.

    All of this of course is based upon homeowners being happy with having their smarthomes locked into one vendor’s platform. We may yet see the market rebel against the internet giant’s ambitions to carve up the connected world.

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  • Connecting people to spaces

    Connecting people to spaces

    Beacon technologies are one of the hottest items in the Internet of Things with retailers, sports stadiums and hotels looking at how they  can use these devices to improve their operations and customer experiences.

    At Dreamforce 2014 Proximity Insight’s Steve Orell spoke on the event’s wearable panel about how their service plugs into beacon technology and customer service.

    Proximity Insight was born out of the 2013 Dreamforce Hackathon where Orell and his team were finalists. From that, the company set up operations in New York with a focus on customer relationship management in the retail industry.

    Retail isn’t the only the field that Orell sees for Proximity Insight with the hotel and casino industries as being other targets.

    “With the hotel, why check-in? Why not walk in and let your smartphone do it for you?” Orell asks.

    “It’s all about making live so much more seamless and slick,” Orell adds. “There’s opportunities in every sector.”

    For businesses looking at rolling out beacon technologies the key is to be adding value to enhance the customer experience, Orell believes.

    “You have to be delivering something to the customer beyond tracking them, it’s about making the whole retail or hospitality experience better. It has to benefit the customer.”

    With beacon technologies now becoming common and the supporting hardware being built into all smartphones, we can expect to see more applications coming onto the market. It’s worth considering how your business can use them to enhance the customer experience.

    Paul travelled to Dreamforce 2014 as a guest of Salesforce

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