SAP says IoT for Business creates new opportunities for enterprises

IoT for Business is in phase one of its’ development but phase two and three are waiting in the wings and will enable organisations to transform themselves and achieve a new level of efficiency. They’ll potentially be able to enter new markets, Michael Lynch, the global co-lead of Internet of Things at SAP, tells George Malim.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is starting to gain momentum in both consumer and enterprise sectors. As the hype continues to rage in the consumer market, the business sector is getting on with the business of generating value from IoT. “Our customers are looking now to drive business value out of the multitude of capabilities that IoT will bring,” confirms Michael Lynch, the global colead of Internet of Things at SAP. “We’re very focused on a group of systems that can grow value in a range of setting and change the focus from a technology discussion to the business outcome.”

SAP sees itself as the provider of three key elements to achieving successful IoT for business. The first is to take SAP’s existing applications and enable them for IoT. The next step will be to innovate with customers and partners to develop new applications.

“We don’t believe the existing applications are the end of the opportunity,” Lynch explains. “Customers want to innovate in areas of their own choosing and we want to work with them to find breakthroughs that transform and enhance their businesses, using IoT.”

The third element of SAP’s IoT for Business strategy is to provide the platforms businesses will require in order to handle the sheer scale of IoT deployments. “As the market develops and new applications and technologies are rolled out organisations require enormous scale in their IoT platforms,” says Lynch. “With big data and inmemory platforms like SAP HANA, we can provide
a platform for other applications to scale up. Partners want platforms that can develop rapidly.”

SAP sees an opportunity to provide those highly scalable platforms and enable organisations to connect into its networks and business suite innovations. The concept of a platform that can connect various business sources and has the power and scalability needed for organisations to extract business value is one that is regarded as highly difficult for individual organisations to achieve. SAP is looking to become the provider that enables businesses to accelerate and simplify IoT deployment by providing that platform.

It’s still early days for the IoT, though. Lynch, however, sees several sectors starting to move ahead with deployments. Large multi-national corporations in automotive and heavy asset industries, in utilities, in manufacturing and, increasingly now, in retail are embracing IoT.

“You will see solutions in all kinds of areas,” confirms Lynch. “We see solutions in telematics and industrial automation helping those sectors. Our main focus is on those industries but SAP is a big place and lots of other areas are being addressed.”

Although IoT is seen as relatively new, it’s worth considering that the business pre-dates the terminology. “SAP has been enabling IoT at the platform level for many years if you think about applications such as RFID (radio frequency identification), for which we have hundreds and hundreds of customers,” Lynch adds. “In terms of specific IoT products that we have in the market
today, we’ve released an extended version of our manufacturing platform to optimise configuration and throughput and connect predictive analytics to maximise machine uptime.”

“That’s an example of an update to an existing technology but we also have a new product that enables cloud-based predictive maintenance, for example,” he says.

Lynch gives an example of a connected logistics deployment at the Port of Hamburg in Germany. Hamburg Port Authority handles an average of 10,000 ships and nine million cargo containers each year and anticipates it will handle 25 million cargo containers by 2025. The challenge facing the Port is that it is unable to expand its geographic footprint so it needs to accelerate the turnaround time for ships docking and the trucks that collect the shipping containers.

With 5,000 trucks entering the port each day now, a traffic handling solution is required to enable it handle a likely trebling of truck numbers. SAP, along with Deutsche Telekom and other partners has created a traffic hub that ensures trucks don’t enter the port until their container is ready to collect.

Another example Lynch gives is at motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson, which through using connected manufacturing applications from SAP, shrunk the size of its manufacturing platform by one-third and increased productivity by 19%, driving a 7% increase in margin.

Other companies are using IoT for business to take them into entirely new commercial areas. Compressor manufacturer Kaeser initially deployed an IoT system to track its compressors and manage their uptime.

“The first thing companies want to do is track equipment and get a dashboard,” explains Lynch. “However, that’s only the first step. Stopping there means you have the information but then have to go back to the practices of 1955 and send out a guy in a truck to check the situation. Phase one is to the get the information and the dashboard, phase two is to optimise what to do about the insights you receive and phase three is to provide new services to customers.”

Kaeser is using the insights it has gained to move to a pay per use model so, instead of simply selling compressors, it now can provide them as a service. The company says it has seen it double its business. This is the ultimate stage where creativity is applied to data from connected devices to create brand new business models, products and services. SAP is enabling this level of creativity and reimagining of business models for its customers today.

These early deployments are pioneering IoT for business and there is a long development path yet to be journeyed down. Lynch points out that much of that innovation will come from specialist companies or dedicated new teams within large businesses. Both will rely on the scale of the platforms and the connections into business applications that SAP can provide.

“If you look at IoT for Business as a process to transform the information into a database and then use it to transform the way a company operates with the end goal of re-imagining your customers’ experience, SAP is the only company with the capabilities to take through that path,” Lynch concludes.

RECENT ARTICLES

Panasonic and Jasmy unveil Web3 Platform for IoT data control

Posted on: March 28, 2024

Panasonic has joined forces with Jasmy (JASMY) blockchain to introduce a Web3 platform that will facilitate the connection of personal data on the Internet of Things (IoT). The collaboration between the Japanese-based blockchain and Panasonic Advanced Technology was initiated in February, but the official announcement was made on March 26.

Read more

Driving connected personalised user experiences with Generative AI

Posted on: March 27, 2024

As the world continues to rapidly move towards digitalisation, customer expectations are also on the rise. Around the globe, telcos are grappling with meeting these expectations. As well as ensuring connectivity in a secure, seamless, and consistent manner 24/7, to compete and differentiate, operators now need to provide personalised experiences that are as unique as

Read more
FEATURED IoT STORIES

What is IoT? A Beginner’s Guide

Posted on: April 5, 2023

What is IoT? IoT, or the Internet of Things, refers to the connection of everyday objects, or “things,” to the internet, allowing them to collect, transmit, and share data. This interconnected network of devices transforms previously “dumb” objects, such as toasters or security cameras, into smart devices that can interact with each other and their

Read more

The IoT Adoption Boom – Everything You Need to Know

Posted on: September 28, 2022

In an age when we seem to go through technology boom after technology boom, it’s hard to imagine one sticking out. However, IoT adoption, or the Internet of Things adoption, is leading the charge to dominate the next decade’s discussion around business IT. Below, we’ll discuss the current boom, what’s driving it, where it’s going,

Read more

9 IoT applications that will change everything

Posted on: September 1, 2021

Whether you are a future-minded CEO, tech-driven CEO or IT leader, you’ve come across the term IoT before. It’s often used alongside superlatives regarding how it will revolutionize the way you work, play, and live. But is it just another buzzword, or is it the as-promised technological holy grail? The truth is that Internet of

Read more

Which IoT Platform 2021? IoT Now Enterprise Buyers’ Guide

Posted on: August 30, 2021

There are several different parts in a complete IoT solution, all of which must work together to get the result needed, write IoT Now Enterprise Buyers’ Guide – Which IoT Platform 2021? authors Robin Duke-Woolley, the CEO and Bill Ingle, a senior analyst, at Beecham Research. Figure 1 shows these parts and, although not all

Read more

CAT-M1 vs NB-IoT – examining the real differences

Posted on: June 21, 2021

As industry players look to provide the next generation of IoT connectivity, two different standards have emerged under release 13 of 3GPP – CAT-M1 and NB-IoT.

Read more

IoT and home automation: What does the future hold?

Posted on: June 10, 2020

Once a dream, home automation using iot is slowly but steadily becoming a part of daily lives around the world. In fact, it is believed that the global market for smart home automation will reach $40 billion by 2020.

Read more

5 challenges still facing the Internet of Things

Posted on: June 3, 2020

The Internet of Things (IoT) has quickly become a huge part of how people live, communicate and do business. All around the world, web-enabled devices are turning our world into a more switched-on place to live.

Read more