Industrial IoT: Trends And Perspectives In The Domestic Market

Before the Developer Choice opening ceremony we talked to Ilya Appolonov, who is an expert in this field and leads IoT at ICL Services. Ilya told us about the current condition of this market, potential benefits of industrial IoT, and nuances when choosing a service provider in this field.

"Active development of the Russian IIoT market began in 2016. And already in 2017, we have observed an explosive growth in demand from large enterprises with state participation in the implementation of IIoT solutions, which is due to the Russian government's decision to transition into a digital economy.

At the same time, Industrial Internet of Things began to penetrate not only in manufacturing industries but also in retail, logistics, medicine, energy generation and transmission, as well as many other areas of business. Examples include automating a logistics park using robotic elevating equipment and a distributed system for diagnosing and monitoring patients' health that provides comprehensive coverage from the level of a nurse in the medical institution to a doctor, who can be thousands of miles away.

However, at the moment, the greatest interest is observed in manufacturing industries — machine building, aircraft building, automotive industry — which account for about 30% of the total IIoT market. And this is natural. IIoT solutions bring many benefits to manufacturing enterprises, including the following ones:

• energy saving
• ensuring the possibility of preventive maintenance and minimization of downtime because of breakdowns
• improving the quality of the final product
• acceleration of the technological cycle
• increasing the asset utilization
• prevention of the theft of parts, assemblies, and finished products
• ensuring the possibility of transition to make-to-order manufacturing
• reduction in the number of accidents

Successful partnership is the key to overall success

Considering the large number of technical components of any IIoT solution — network and server infrastructure, end devices, services for analyzing streaming and static data — none of Russian IT integrators can fully cover all the needs using only their own resources. Therefore, the integrator's own technical competencies are often not so important as its ability to find partners and ensure effective collaboration with them.

In the future, ideas for new solutions in the IIoT market will be provided by integrators who should have extensive experience in solving applied business tasks using IIoT.

As a beginner expert in IIoT, our company has already signed a partnership agreement with Signum, a Russian vendor of the Winnum IIoT platform. In addition, we will participate in Developer Choice, a competition for professional hardware and software developers.

IIoT solutions have higher requirements for a guaranteed business effect and lower implementation risks. Therefore, we are sure that the success of IIoT projects depends entirely on a successful technological partnership."