Livre Blanc IOT

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Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services WHITE PAPER for smarter Industries,

Transcript of Livre Blanc IOT

Internet of Things, for smarter

Industries & Services

WHITE PAPER

for smarter Industries,

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

for smTable of contents

1. Market overview

2. A large technology/technical universe

3. Industry Use Cases

4. ALTEN’s positioning

5. Conclusion

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

ALTEN in brief ALTEN is the European leader in technology consulting and engineering. We provide support and assistance to our clients in the fields of innovation, R&D and information technology systems. Our 14,800 top-level engineers conduct design and research projects for Technical and Information System Divisions for our corporate customers in the industry, telecommunications and tertiary sectors. Globalisation is increasing, and we, at ALTEN, part of our clients’ R&D strategy to boost their performance and support them in breaking into new markets. With a presence in 16 countries, and a turnover for 2013 of 1.2 billion euros, we cover the whole product development cycle, and offer a choice of services from consulting to project outsourcing. We are the technology partner of choice for Europe’s leading corporations.

By mixing its industrial domain knowledge, -and its technology consulting telecommunications and Information systems business lines, ALTEN is positioned as a vendor-neutral, technology agnostic, consulting and engineering partner for all actors of this transforming eco-system. The portfolio of services offered by ALTEN in the “Internet of Things” (IoT) domain is grouped into 6 categories (communicating devices, networks, information systems, mobile application, sector-specific product engineering and integration services), which are mapped onto the overall end-to-end architecture of an IoT/M2M solution.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

Market overview

Over the past 50 years, the Internet has exponentially grown from a small research network to a

worldwide widespread network that services more than a billion users. The further miniaturization and

cost reduction of electronic devices makes it possible to expand the Internet into a new dimension: the

smart objects. A smart object is a cyber-physical system or an embedded system, consisting of a thing

(the physical entity) and a component (the computer) that processes the sensor data and supports a

wireless communication link to the Internet. The novelty of the Internet of Things (IoT) seems to have its

roots not only in the functional capability of a smart object (because today many embedded systems are

connected to the Internet) but even more in the size of billions or even trillions of smart objects that

bring about new technical and societal issues that are only going to grow.

According to Cisco, the “Internet of Things” world appears as long as there is more connected devices

than people.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

Some examples of the issues mentioned above are: authentic identification of a smart object,

management and self-organization of networks of smart objects, diagnostic and maintenance, context

awareness and goal-oriented behavior, intrusion of smart objects into the private life and generation of

huge amounts of private data.

The IoT’s field is very wide, including the communicating devices and the machine-to-machine (M2M). It

goes even further by enabling an Internet connection for any item. Regardless of the technology used to

connect to the Internet: NFC, RFID chip, sensor, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, the communication between those

objects caracterises IoT. The value of IoT is also based on the complementarity of both data storage and

data processing. Data is the fundamental piece of an IoT solution, it represents the information

exchanged and has a tremendous value in itself.

There is also a semantic evolution of terms that makes the “Internet of Thing” become the “Internet of

Everything”. In fact, everything – Every Thing – i.e. the thousand things in contact with a human being is

concerned by this revolution. And all the generations are involved with this new social development.

We can then point out three general trends:

1. Mature and accessible technologies (for developing communication devices, ...)

2. Stakes’ awereness related to the energy management

3. Growing needs in terms of health

“Internet of Thing” is a concept of intimate convergence of four factors (sensors, mobile, big data and

cloud for the data storage).

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

IOT semantics: some definition

Three categories of devices

Three categories of devices are classified under the term of « Internet of things »: connected

things/objects, M2M, communicating devices.

Connected objects are directly connected to the Internet or through a terminal, storing their data in the

cloud. These connected things could be considered as “inert”, which means that they don’t have their

“own intelligence” but are able to send information to communicating devices.

The term M2M, standing for machine-to-machine, gathers under one term the communications

between machines and the access to an information system without a human intervention, via a

Bluetooth, RFID, NFC, Wi-Fi or 3/4G technology. This M2M field would probably be the most promising.

Communicating devices are tablets, smartphones, laptops, TVs or other screens (like glasses). One of

the key points about the communicating devices is the strong interaction between us, as human beings

and these devices.

M2M and connected objects work with different hardware and communication technologies. Whereas

the RFID and the 2D bar code are used to interact with objects, M2M applications run on several

different network technologies, which allow the machines to communicate and forward generated data

or received data from another machine depending on the type of machine and the application. In a

similar scheme, whereas cellular technology is more often used for M2M deployments, new

communication technologies (more adapted to the classical M2M telemetric software application) are

arising those last years and could trigger a radical change in a near future (e.g. SigFox, Neul).

Nevertheless, setting up the Internet of Things requires a new architecture with upgradeable naming

and addressing technologies as well as new tools for accessing data, because one of the caracteristics of

the IoT is to use and generate a huge amount of data (coming from M2M and connected objects).

To connect objects:

NFC (near field communication): wireless communication technology, which enables information

exchange between RFID chips.

RFID chip (Radio Frequency Identification): embedded electronic tag, which allows receiving and storing

remote data. The ISO/CEI 1443 norm standardized the identification and the transmission.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

Bluetooth: communication protocol based on radio waves with a short action range, typically of 1 to 20

meters. This protocol can be used for the IoT.

Wi-Fi: technology that allows an electronic device to exchange data or connect to the internet wirelessly

using radio waves with an action ranging between 20 and 50 meters.

Internet of Things’ environment

Big data: set of statistic data, usually unstructured, which potential amount requires new management

and information processing tools. Considered as the one of the biggest technical challenge of the

decade, “big data” concerns in particular the IoT because of the huge amount of information going to be

created.

Cloud: the Cloud technology offers the capacity for a user to outsource the storage of his data on a

network supplied by a provider or publicly available

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

IoT’s market outlook: some figures

With this background, the IDATE Research Institut estimates that 15 billion of things (machines,

communicating devices and items) are already connected to the Internet in 2012, while they were 4

billion in 2010. According to IDATE, “In 2020, there will be 80 billion of connected things, of which 85%

of connected objects, 11% of communicating devices, and only 4% for the M2M”. About growth, the

Internet of Objects will increase with an annual rate of 41% between 2010 and 2020, followed by the

communicating devices with 22% and the M2M with 16%.

According to the previous graphs, it is obvious that there is a huge potential for the Internet of Things in

the future as much regarding the market size as the annual rate of development. By looking closer on

the market share of the communicating devices and M2M, one question is worth to be raised: Will both

of these markets still have potential in the next ten/twenty years?

In addition to the actual number of communicating machines, the business value of that market and the

value creation for the various industry sectors deploying those technologies should also be taken into

account and measured if possible.

This market remains difficult to estimate: In fact, according to a CISCO’s survey, in 2020 the IoT will

generate a market of $14,400 bn, whereas Gartner forecasts a market in 2020 of $1,900 bn.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

The market of IoT is full of issues linked in particular to the industrial market. Connected things are going

to change completely the relationship between the industry manufacturer, the object and the

consumer. The relationship between the industry and the object goes on after the sale, because of the

necessary storage of data that the device is relaying to its parent industry. Thus, the industry can use

those data to always provide new services to the consumers.

There are real opportunities for the IoT in so many fields such as Energy (smart home, smart city, smart

grid, smart water, …), Transportation (connected cars, communication car to car, public transportation,

traffic improvement, …), Health (remote diagnosis, silver economy, …) and the Manufacturing world

(logistics, smart manufacturing, large retailing, …). Without forgetting the issues of security, protection

of data and private life.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

A large technology / technical Universe

The IoT domain and its potential use cases imply in fact a very large spectrum of

technologies and technical skills to be put together to deliver in the end the services

and all its potential benefits. Rather than going into details of each technology (this can

be easily found in specific technology documentation), the ambition of this white paper

is on the contrary to describe the overall collection or universe of technologies fulfilling

each of them a specific role and altogether contributing and creating the real value for

the end-user.

Paradoxically, when turning to IoT applications, we think initially about small start-up companies,

producing a very specific object and expert in a very peculiar technology. This is definitely a wrong

image.

Firstly, these start-up companies, as they may exist, need to put together a wide range of technologies

and internal skills. Going from designing and producing a non-connected object to a connected device

implies adding technologies such as : communication protocols, embedded software development,

security and encryption, user-right management, personal data repository and implementation of

related country-specific regulation, human-machine interface, user experience and ergonomics, mobile

application development and operating systems, cloud infrastructure, remote installation and

application management… to name only the most significant ones. It also requires a complete new

range of internal processes for manufacturing, delivering, supporting customers, including the use of on-

line / e-commerce / web-based technologies.

Secondly, most of the IoT use cases, especially in the industry sector, will require putting together a

number of industry players / partners, each bringing its own set of technologies, products and services,

and altogether delivering as an eco-system the final IoT benefit and value. Additional technologies and

services include: telecom radio/mobile networks, secure communication, integration of embedded

communication module with device own software, business-specific application development,

integration with enterprise information systems, big data and data analytics to leverage user or object-

generated information, and so on …

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

Without pretending being exhaustive, this chapter tries to organize, describe and position briefly each of

the above technologies, their relative dependencies and the contribution they bring to the overall use

case.

We propose to group the various technologies into the following categories: Device & Embedded

technologies, Communication & networking technologies, Application technologies and Process-related

technologies. The first 3 domains cover the three main building blocks of an end-to-end IoT use case:

Device & Embedded technologies

The technologies embedded into the device/object are numerous and of various

types depending on the amount of processing to be done locally on the device, the

amount of data to be transferred from/to the device and the non-functional

requirements like encryption, storage, boot or wake-up time, battery consumption

and so on… These technologies are, among others:

Hardware, electronics and microprocessor technologies. Most of these devices will integrate

specific tailor made electronic components, able to support the software necessary to implement

the use case.

Sensor technologies, to monitor and report the key parameters of the device (e.g. temperature,

human physical data, technical sensor data, …)

Embedded software development, going from small footprint software to full software stacks

including Operating System (OS), middleware and embedded applications. There exist many

embedded OS with real-time or semi real-time features. Well known general purpose OS are

RTOS, Windows Embedded, and Embedded Linux. iOS and Android OS are used of course for

communicating devices such as smartphones but may be used also in a very near future for other

types of connected devices.

Battery consumption is a key factor for devices. This again goes from zero energy storage, such as

passive RFID tags receiving energy through the scanning device, to devices with standard batteries.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

Communication protocols from the device are also many, and will remain probably so, as the radio

characteristics support the actual use case. A given protocol has unique characteristics including

distance range, frequency, latency, interference, security, and so on. Typical protocols used are

NFC, RFID, ZigBee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 2G/GPRS, 3G/HSPA, 4G/LTE. One trend though of these

data/packet protocols is the convergence towards the IP (Internet Protocol) stack for connecting

to the internet and transporting data packets. The generalization of IPv6, using a much wider

addressing scheme than IPv4, will allow connected devices to have their own IP address. Specific

radio protocols are also emerging, dedicated to M2M use cases where latency and high

throughput is not an issue, but low-energy and low-cost is important.

Mechanical design. This is also a critical part of the device overall design. Besides the actual

function of the device to be supported, the fact that the device is possibly connected to the

Internet, implies a new/different mechanical/body design taking into account this “high-tech”

nature and the early adopter customers, be it consumers or enterprises.

Communication & networking technologies

Once the device is equipped with energy, connectivity and processing power, it

will communicate with other devices or with “the Internet” through a network.

The network can be: a Point-to-Point connection between a RFID or NFC-enabled

device and a reader (itself most probably connected also), a local (e.g. home over

Wifi) network with an access point connection to the Internet, or a private or public radio network

operated by a Service Provider. These networks will have themselves various characteristics in order

to support the required use case. As underlined before, the Internet Protocol (IP) technology, with its

IPv6 recent flavor, is the underlying protocol that will be the most widely used, in particular obviously

for devices with direct connections to the internet. The networking technology used will have to

address topics/issues such as:

Addressing / Identification of smart objects. Depending again on the technology used, the device

identification can have multiple forms: Electronic Product Code (EPC) for RFID-enabled objects,

IPv6 identification for network-connected devices, SIM-card based (IMEI) authentication for

mobile network connected devices, etc …

Secure communications, secure access. Each time a device becomes “connected”, there is a risk of

intrusion, malware attacks, proprietary/confidential data access and so on… Security is a key

element to be addressed by the underlying network.

Communication and networking technologies. The communication requirement for a connected

device is a data/packet transport network. Besides the “simple” NFC device-to-device

communication, the connected device will interact with Application Servers, Information Systems,

smartphones and possibly human beings, through a public radio network operated by a Service

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

Provider and/or through an access network operated by an internet Service provider. Network

features like network Quality of Service (QoS), network latency (round trip duration), network

upstream and downstream bandwidth, network security, and so on … are features delivered by

the underlying network, which can be adapted/tailored to the specific IoT use case. Also, the

network subscriptions, service charging, support services, all these need to be tailored / adapted

to the IoT use case.

Application technologies

An IoT or Connected Device alone does not bring any value. It is

in association with a server application or an information system,

itself possibly connected and accessed by a user through a web

or mobile application on a smartphone, that it delivers its value.

This Application may sit either in “the cloud” or in a private

enterprise data center. The various components / technologies for this application part are:

Service Platforms and APIs. More and more communication device makers deliver also

frameworks/platforms for managing the communication with the devices. These platforms may

offer APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to ease the development of the specific use cases.

Integration with Information System and data base Applications. In the case of industrial

applications, the end-to-end value will come from the integration of the connected devices with

the information system of the enterprise, either populating or accessing databases, or providing

greater value by mixing connected device data with enterprise business data and business logic

applications. The implementation of an IoT industrial use case will imply in most/all cases a

significant integration work.

Mobile Applications. Interestingly, a lot of current IoT use cases have a mobile application

component. Not only because mobile access to web applications is becoming the preferred access

method compared to fixed access, but also because there are additional features and companion

applications that are interesting to provide when on the move, either close to the connected

object or not. The IoT use case becomes in fact a 3-party relationship: a connected device, an

application server (public or enterprise specific) and a human being user.

Data Storage, Big data, Data analytics. One of the main characteristics of IoT use cases is the

generation of tremendous volumes of data. With sensors and an always-on connection, a device

can generate a lot of data. Most of the time, this data will be stored for processing in the

Application Server related database. This implies a number of technologies first for storing these

amounts of data, then to analyze and take benefit of the results of this data processing. Big Data

and data analytics technologies are playing a key role there.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

The processed data can itself be exposed further to other application use cases and/or third party

partners, taking benefit of the aggregated results (e.g. profiling applications, targeted ads …).

Process-related technologies

There are also a number of technologies, products, and services to be

developed to deploy and support IoT use cases. In the industrial domain or

B2B2C context, the connected world will change tremendously the design,

manufacturing, delivery and enterprise support organizations. Just to mention,

as an illustration, the few areas impacted by the IoT use cases deployments:

Software over-the-air delivery and software upgrades allow simplifying and saving operation costs

and keeping a consistent installed base. The versioning and localization (delivery packages

according to geography, regulation, language constraints…) of delivery has to be adapted and can

take into benefit of course of the remote and auto-configuration capabilities.

Remote Management of smart objects. Connected objects/devices can be managed remotely. So

network inventory, automatic network discovery, device status supervision and monitoring can be

“easily” done remotely. This has to be taken into account at early stage of projects.

Diagnostic, Maintenance, Customer care, customer support. All these tasks can take benefit of the

connected nature of the devices. Internal processes need be deployed to do this.

Device manufacturers often provide tools and platforms for such remote administration. These tools

can/should be integrated with the network supervision and administration “standard” tools. This also

requires a lot of integration activities.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

Industry Use Cases

The Internet of Things and the Connected Devices are now known by the end-user consumer market, following the recent fashionable objects that we see emerging into our everyday life (weighing scales, watchs, bands, glasses, ...). The IoT has also entered the industrial sector, from multiple angles and with multiples impacts and benefits. This section explores typical use cases in the Transportation, Energy, Health and Manufacturing sectors. Most analytists predict that the IoT/M2M will not only change industry products, but also (1) impact the

production/manufacturing organization and (2) open new services revenue streams and opportunities.

Value chains, business models, eco-systems will dramatically evolve because of these technologies.

An evolution of the relationships between the different players is happening. Currently brought

together as closed “silos”, those industrial actors are going to turn to an opened “cluster” organization,

with more and more partnerships “Industrial Constructor – Telecom player – Services player”, which we

could already noticed in the field of “connected cars” for example.

As we have started to discuss, industries able to assemble cross-functional teams and multi-technology

skills will probably be the leading enterprises of tomorrow.

This section explores typical use cases in the Transportation, Energy, Health and Manufacturing sectors.

While talking a neutral position in each section, we show some of ALTEN project case studies (within

blue boxes) as concrete examples in each sector.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

There are multiple factors tied to connected object, in relation to transportation. The first is to succeed in the conception of connected car, which would effectively lead to a reduction in the number of accidents and traffic jams. Another challenge would be to coordinate the multiple methods of transportation in a city, while lastly, the last challenge would be to set up a payment system in which the user would pay for the “real time use” equivalent or proportion of the insurance premium.

In the connected car field, two primary concerns revolve around the concepts of “Entertainment

modules for internal use” and of “Modules for external use”, which when wirelessly connected can offer such service as the “Intelligent Transport System (ITS)”. This system deals with the coordination of vehicle trajectories, like the one present in Google Cars.

Vehicle with embedded systems: collection systems, treatment and Information dissemination

Telecommunications network: GSM and Satellite

Information system and “Back-office”, which are aimed at the multiple parties using the vehicle transmitted information (automotive manufacturers, fleet managers, insurance companies…)

Emergence of multimodal transport, “shared car” services such as Autolib offered by the Bollore

group.

Connect on a unique platform Implementation shared communications between vehicles, trains and bikes.

Strengthen standards and politics for regulation of these interconnected objects.

Completely secure the information network to prevent from any trains – cars – bikes interconnection hacking.

Usage based Insurance « UBI », a predictive after sale service which enables remote supervision - in

real time – of the vehicle condition through CAN bus data.

Implementation of telematic boxes in vehicles, which send through mobile network, and in real time, collected data such as speed, conduct actions, traveled distance and travel time.

IT “back-office” processes the collected information, calculates insurance premium of the vehicle in real time and gives it to the drivers either through the vehicle onboard computer, or through a mobile application on a smartphone.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

Within a leading automotive

equipment manufacturer, ALTEN

joined the innovation center,

which works to develop the

tomorrow’s products and

prototypes. ALTEN brought its

technical expertise on an

aftermaket part car radio project

totally diven by a smartphone.

ALTEN took also part in the

setting up of a communication

protocol for the navigation on

smartphone.

TRANSPORTATION

Within a leading automotive

equipment manufacturer, ALTEN

took part in the Bluetooth

application development of a

French automotive manu-

facturer’s radio. ALTEN was in

particular in charge of the

software architecture (redesign

of the already existing HIM,

design of the new display, system

architecture) as well as the

Bluetooth applicative develop-

ment part.

TRANSPORTATION

Our customer – a Telecom

operator – was looking for a

partner to help in the realization

of a demonstrator on a GENIVI

platform, integrating and

enhancing the Group technology

« Natural language ».

The goal is to develop a

prototype both multimodal

(sound/text, touch command,

voice recognition) and multi-

media oriented (image, videos,

maps..)

TRANSPORTATION

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

The problematics tied to the field of energy and connected objects concern an improvement of the energy efficiency of buildings, the time reduction of the energy network cut, the integration of new consumer behavior (charging stations of electric vehicles, datacenter etc…) as well as distant drive of house devices in order to master consumptions and budget.

SMART GRID – “Intelligent” network for transportation/ energy distribution.

Implementation of measuring devices and communicants remote control on energy networks

Implementation of communicants counters at final consumer level

IS “back-office” of distant drive of energy network, consumption measure, billing emission and personalized distribution of consumption information.

SMART BUILDING – Building technical management “intelligent”

Implementation of alternatives energy sources (solar, geothermal, cogeneration) controlled through communicants module.

Implementation of equipment and communicating sensors on management system of building: energy, lighting, air conditioning, ventilation, heating access, video surveillance

Computing system of the whole connected system management

Equipment and sensor in the building

Building communication network.

Supervisory software SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) type

SMART HOME – Connected house

Implementation of communicant modules in all the housing environment equipment: computer, touchpad, smartphone, television, screen, household electrical appliances, meters ….)

Implementation of framework software allowing the interconnection of the whole equipment and application of the housing environment.

Implementation of IS “Back-office” with a centralized management

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

ALTEN’s team worked for an energy efficiency project through statistical modeling among which the objectives were to: -Supply decision elements enriched in the conception of the building -Improve the energy earnings ratio vs investment -Facilitate the replicate ability based on a model -Bring a teaching aid to the inhabitants of the building

ENERGY Our customer, an energy, digital and services solutions integrator, was willing to develop a solution for several actors (energy mana-gers, maintenance…) to improve the energetic efficiency on a long-term basis. ALTEN’s team set up a complex solution (box, communi-cation systems, decision support application, hosting…) in line with the client expectations. ALTEN’s team influence also the process of changes in this project.

ENERGY

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

The booming of the Internet of Things also concerns healthcare field. Several objects are wired to smartphones allowing from now on taking care of user’s sleep, physical activity or heart rate. Shared with the doctors, this collected information allows a real follow-up care of the patient. Connected things may also be directly useful to the patients. One of the major stakes will be to increase the wellbeing of people with disabilities (due to illnesses, disability and old age) as well as enable a better remoted medical follow-up.

Robot helping old-age or handicap persons to be maintain in their houses Communicant robot development with the whole equipment of the house environment:

“Follow-up” of the everyday-life objects (robot back-office)

Multimedia equipment drive (Schedule, music, TV, net, phone…)

Medical follow-up (biomedical constants)

Close relations alert (behavior learning – blackout, fall)

Mobile video teleoperated Augmented immersive reality

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

ALTEN worked with a leader in management of biomedical dev-ices and connectivity, which develops and sets up integration solutions for biomedical devices. Our customer develops in parti-cular a smart touch command device dedicated to the mana-gement of connectivity between medical devices and to the gathering of data, directly at patient’s bedside. ALTEN’s team worked on hardware validation and solutions maintenance.

ALTEN was involved in the design of an old-age persons robot aiming to provide them support in their house. Developed services: -“Follow up” of the everyday-life objects (Robot back-office) -Multimedia management (schedule, music, TV, internet, tel…) -Medical follow-up and mobile video alerts teleoperated

HEALTH

HEALTH

A global leader specialized in cardiovascular medical devices partnered with one of the French major telecommunication opera-tors for a new tele-cardiology project, wich allows a permanent monitoring on patients. ALTEN’s team worked in particular on pacemakers miniaturization and on the improvement of wireless communication between the implant and the external environ-ment

HEALTH

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

With the introduction of the Internet of Things and services into the manufacturing environment, we are entering the fourth industrial revolution: Industry 4.0, as quoted in the german report “recommendations for implementing the strategic initiative INDUSTRIE 4.0”. The keyword for this new industry is the digitization of the factories. This revolution is at the crossroad of a virtual and delocalized world of the internet and the real world of the industrial plants. The Industry 4.0 – also called future factory – becomes the major reference for the industrial production.

This industry facilitates fundamental improvements to the industrial processes involved in manufacturing, engineering, material usage, supply chain and life cycle management. It enables a better interaction between all the actors of the production chain: robots, engines, customers, partners, other production sites… The goal of the Industry 4.0 is to make the factories become smart factories. The final product will be able to communicate with engines during its realization phase. Such products will thus be renamed “smart products”. The “technological bricks”, which will ensure the transition from Industry 3.0 towards Industry 4.0 already exist or are going to be set up: sensors, robot, big data, Internet of Things, cloud computing. Industry 4.0 will address and solve some of the challenges facing the world today such as resource and energy efficiency, urban production and demographic change.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

ALTEN Positioning

ALTEN is positioned at the cross-road of this wide set of the technical domains and the industrial sectors which will benefit from these technologies. By mixing its industrial domain knowledge, its technology consulting and engineering expertise, and its telecommunications and Information systems expertise, ALTEN is positioned as a vendor-neutral, technology agnostic, consulting and engineering partner for all actors of this transforming eco-system. Connected objects today are a source of great revenue generating potential for ALTEN, taking into

account that 70% of the market is linked to services. Connected objects stand at the crossroad of our

three business lines – Technology Consulting & Engineering (TCE), Networks, Telecom & Multimedia

(NTM), Information Systems (IS/IT).

ALTEN currently operates in predominantly engineering related fields (70%), but with also a strong

presence in Digital fields, such as Telecom and IT, which account for 30% of its operations. The Digital

field has aimed at growing in the Telecom and Tertiary sectors, but also in our historical Industrial

Engineering sectors.

ALTEN is today a leading partner in supporting this continuous technology (re-)evolution. Actively

present in the Telecommunications field, boosted by such technological advancements as 4G networks

($23bn in forecasted revenue for vertically integrated markets in 2018), ALTEN is also able to leverage

the generalization of Internet Protocol (IP) technology. Lastly, the group has a strong foothold in IS/IT

related fields, developing large activities in software development, mobile applications, IT infrastructure,

Cloud and Big Data.

25% of jobs created in the last five years have been related to IT, Telecommunications and Multimedia.

This means creation of new usage in the field of value-added services for the Industry with the right

combinaison of new IT, Telecommunication and Multimedia skills and business/industry sector specific

skills and expertise.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

The portfolio of services offered by ALTEN is described in the picture below. The services are grouped

into 6 categories, mapped onto the overall end-to-end architecture of an IoT/M2M solution.

These services are related to the device itself and its communicating

features/functionalities. Necessary skills are related to hardware

integration and embedded software development. ALTEN has a vendor-

neutral position and can advise on best technologies to be used for the

embedded part: Operating System possibly with small footprint features,

Radio and communication protocols. This part includes also the

integration and interworking with the core device features. Besides

embedded software development expertise, ALTEN has a long practice of testing activities and can put

in place dedicated teams and service center organization for performing device testing, from protocol-

level testing to application level testing.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

ALTEN has a large offerings of services related to telecommunications.

ALTEN is one of the service partners of many equipement vendors and

major service providers in Europe, with activities related to

telecommunications products and technologies, as well as activities

related to network engineering, network roll-out, network configuration,

network operations and support activities. ALTEN can help in a global

IoT/M2M use case to choose the best communication network

technologies. As for device testing, ALTEN can put in place activities to

integrate and validate inter-operability between devices and networks, including roaming issues

between service providers. Also ALTEN can take in charge volume activities related to network and

service provisioning, up to service supervision and technical support activities.

As we have seen in section 2, and even more in an industrial use case,

the IoT/M2M solution will require in almost all cases an adaptation or

even a complete new information system. ALTEN can then propose its

IS/IT service offerings, including IS software development (using

Microsoft, Open-source or Java technologies), and integration with

database and existing legacy applications. As for the device and network

aspect, ALTEN has developed specific skills and expertise on

IS/application testing, following in particular the ISTQB standard

practices. Besides the IS part, ALTEN can help in the IT infrastructure

deployment for hosting the dedicated application, which may include deployment on private or public

cloud infrastuctures or dedicated servers. ALTEN brings also in this domain its IT Service Management

(ITSM) expertise for handling the IS/IT production-related activities (system administration,

configuration, monitoring, support, …). The deployed information system can / shall include the

handling of collected data from the connected devices and the storage and application processing to

take benefit from this (in general huge) amount of information. Big data, business intelligence, Data

analytics technologies are used for this purpose.

As we have also seen, mobile applications are very often part of the

overall solution, either as mandatory component or as a portal to

configure and administrate the service. ALTEN, in particular through its

affiliate company id.apps in France, or through ALTEN branches in other

countries, is providing complete Mobile Application development

services, from consulting on mobile technologies (native, web-based, …)

to design of the mobile application, software development on leading

mobile embedded operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows, …), testing of application on

representative smartphone panels and in live network environments, and publishing of application onto

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

public or private application stores. The design phase of mobile applications are particularly important.

Ergonomics and user experience skills are used during this phase, as well as iterative processes with the

customer.

As opposed to specialized IS/IT companies who will handle

only this application-level part, ALTEN brings into these

IoT/M2M use cases its domain knowledge and product

expertise coming from its Technology Consulting and

Engineering services deployed into various industrial sectors : Transportation and Automotive,

Aeropsace and Defense, Energy and life sciences. ALTEN is taking part of major product development or

R&D programs of its large customers. Adapting a product design and implementation to take benefit of

its new connected nature is key. Understanding the nature of data to be transmitted to a central

information system is also a key differentiator.

ALTEN is not a System Integrator, who will take on one

hand global end-to-end project responsibility but who will

also push and tune a specific solution to avoid taking risks

on unknown technology or third-party products. ALTEN is

providing instead System integration Services, helping its

customer to handle the global solution. These services include Program and project management

services, end-to-end architecture services, consulting on technologies and third-party components, end-

to-end integration and validation services. This end-to-end expertise relies on the specific expertise and

offerings described briefly in this section.

ALTEN has realized a number of projects, each of them covering one or several aspects of these 6

service categories. To better illustrate the industrial domain benefits, the ALTEN case studies have been

inserted into the previous section under each industrial sector.

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

Conclusion

The Internet of Things will be the next evolution/revolution in terms of general public and industrial use cases. This sector involves many technical and various fields. In the industrial ones, we have explored use cases in the automotive, energy, health and manufacturing sectors, but our study is of course not exhaustive and these sectors are not restrictive. ALTEN is strongly positioned in three fields: ETC, networks and IT. ALTEN is thus able to be one of the essential players for the future of the Internet of Things. ALTEN is ready to anticipate and serve this new kind of industrialization. Beyond this huge deployment of the Internet of Things, the networks and all the linked applications don’t have to be forgotten. To make the Internet of Things operational, ALTEN will be able to manage services like network deployment steering and protocolary test. ALTEN is strongly positioned to cope with this revolution of Internet of Things and to serve this industrial

revolution, thanks to:

An IP culture and expertise

A combined expertise in operator networks and information systems

An ability to work in the complementary fields of Technology Engineering, Deployment

Management and Assistance & Operations.

ALTEN is prepared to help its clients move to this transformation in order to improve their

competitiveness and increase their production flexibility.

- Detection of physical interaction between user and virtual o

Internet of Things, for smarter Industries & Services White paper

bstacle

In light of IDATE’s forecast (80 billion of connected objects in 2020) and of the many actions conducted to provide support of this Internet of Things world’s boom (fundraising, appointments, investments in every field (consumption and industrial world)…), the potential of the Internet of Things is considerable. By mixing its industrial domain knowledge, - and its technology consulting, telecom-munications and Information systems business lines, ALTEN is positioned as a vendor-neutral, technology agnostic, consulting and engineering partner for all actors of this transforming eco-system. This white paper draws up a panorama of the opportunities offered by the Internet of Things in the industrial world, with non-exhaustive examples in the fields of energy, automotive, health and manufacturing engineering.

Connected objects stand at the crossroad of the three ALTEN’s business lines – Technology Consulting & Engineering (TCE), Networks, Telecom & Multimedia (NTM), Information Systems (IS/IT).

40, avenue André Morizet 92514 Boulogne-Billancourt Cedex

Tel : +33 (0)1 46 08 70 00 www.alten.fr

© Direction Marketing Groupe ALTEN Juin 2014