Smart IoT London Conference explores if IoT will be part of our day to day lives - Dispatch Weekly

Is IOT going to be part of our day to day lives? What we have learned from Smart IoT London Conference.

Smart IoT London is the UK’s largest gathering of Global IoT expertise over 2 days, from 15-16th March 2017 at ExCeL London.

The event features:

• Leading experts from O2, Shell International, IOT UK, Tyssenkrup and many more.
• 70 world leading suppliers like Oracle, AT&T, Wiipro digital, InVMA and Telit.
• Urban IoT Stream, hearing from leading organisations and projects on successful Smart City business models, and how value can be realised through go to marketing strategies, whilst bringing together the parties to make this happen.
• Innovate Launchpad – a dedicated zone for the UK and Europe’s leading start-ups.
• Access to co-located events: Big Data World, Cloud Security Expo, Cloud Expo Europe, and Data Centre World.

If I had to compare this year’s event to last year’s, I noticed quite a significant shift in terms of calibre of speakers and exhibitors.

In 2017, around 80% of exhibitors were promoting cloud management, data integrations, and security solution services; mostly software or integration specialists.

Last year around 65% of exhibitors were hardware resellers or manufactures.

More established players are jumping on the IoT bandwagon, AT&T for instance had the biggest and most visible stand at the London conference. Nominet’s (who resells co.uk domains) R&D department is using its infrastructure to manage and control IoT devices. Salesforce is using its cloud solutions to facilitate Melbourne Australia smart cities transition. Oracle wants to standardize integration of devices with the enterprise performing real-time, big data, and predictive analytics on IoT streams and events.

Microsoft Azure has been widely used to build IoT frameworks which are easy to prototype like Arkessa. Arkessa enables IoT and Machine to Machine (M2M) connectivity anywhere in the world.

This year, the conference saw very few sensor manufactures. Unlike last year where we spoke to Chinese companies which had a few stands, there were none present this year.

LoRa protocol was mentioned as the 2017 protocol of choice with an unbelievable growth over the past 18 months. Could LoRa overtake Bluetooth or Zigbee? This is something we see happening in a couple of years when battery technology will be able to improve. With coverage distance of up to 5km in urban areas, and 15km in suburban areas, it looks like a winner to me.

On edge devices are definitely getting cheaper, we saw some interesting ones for around €60. Many are also becoming cellular enabled with 2g or 3g. Gemalto is building integrated sims within their chips to increase security for €60 for their prototyping board.

The most interesting talk was Melbourne City of Trees, where trees have email addresses and sensors to help the city stay cool over the hot summer months.

All in all, IoT produced another great show this year, which is a reflection of the current market trends.

IOT is here to stay and grow, and is getting smarter and smarter.