Policy Observatory

Finns show industrial internet expertise at Slush conference

Fri 21 Nov 2014, 14:07

The Internet of Things was one of the hottest sectors at the 2014 Slush conference. Three Finnish companies went to Slush to show off their know-how in the growing sector.

Tags: Internet of Things, start-ups, IoT, high-tech, Internet, Finland, Slush conference

The Internet of Things may bring a new economic boom

Wed 3 Dec 2014, 21:20

IT World thinks the Internet of Things (IoT) may be more significant in reshaping the competitive landscape than the arrival of the Internet. Its productivity potential is so powerful it will deliver a new era of prosperity. That's the argument put forth by Michael Porter, an economist at the Harvard Business School and James Heppelmann, president and CEO of PTC, in a recent Harvard Business Review essay. PTC is a product design software firm that recently acquired machine-to-machine (M2M) firm Axeda Corp.

In the past 50 years, IT has delivered two major transformations or "waves," as the authors describe it. The first came in the 1960s and 1970s, with IT-enabled process automation, computer-aided design and manufacturing resource planning. The second was the Internet and everything it delivered. The third is IoT.

Tags: Internet of Things, IoT, big data, Internet, economic boom, competition

FTC chair warns about risks of connected devices

Wed 7 Jan 2015, 21:20

In a speech at the CES conference this week, FTC Chair Edith Ramirez warned of the privacy risks of connected home devices. "In the not-too-distant future, many, if not most, aspects of our everyday lives will be digitally observed and stored," Ramirez said.

Tags: FTC, Internet of Things, connected home devices, warning

Samsung pledges to make an open Internet of Things

Tue 6 Jan 2015, 08:00

Samsung sold 665m devices last year, many of which already have internet connectivity. But Yoon promised that by 2017 90% of those devices will plug into the IoT ecosystem, and 100% in five years.

“I’ve heard people say they want to create a single operating system for IoT, but these people only work with their own devices. We can deliver the benefits of IoT only if all sensors can talk to each other,” said Yoon in his opening keynote for CES in Las Vegas where he laid out Samsung’s vision for the future of IoT. “I’m making a promise that our IoT devices and products will be open. We will ensure that others can easily connect to our devices.”

Tags: Internet of Things, connected devices, Internet, open, senzors, industry

Intelligence layer for the Internet of Things

Wed 31 Dec 2014, 18:20

IFTTT has far bigger ambitions, explains founder and CEO Linden Tibbets. Its future, he believes, is in connecting the internet of things - everyday devices and objects increasingly being given internet capability to be monitored, controlled and connected online. As part of the ambition to make IFTTT “a foundational layer” for the internet of things, a next step is to make recipes a fixed part of third party apps. So where Instagram users are offered the choice of posting to Facebook and Twitter, they might be offered an IFTTT recipe too.

Tags: Internet layer, If This Then That, Internet of Things

EU spends millions to make next Facebook European

Thu 2 Apr 2015, 20:20

EU Commissioner Oettinger believes Europe’s industrial competitiveness will in the future depend to a large extent on the capacity to develop high quality software and using the most modern computing technologies. EU is investing €80 million in up to 1,000 start-ups to promote the use of Fiware, a public-private partnership between the EU and a consortium of companies that started in 2011.

Tags: apps, Internet of Things, software, Gunther Oettinger, investment, EU, startups