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AT&T's Khan: Analytics Deep Impact on Industrial IoTIn March, AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) announced a partnership on a new Internet of Things (IoT) analytics solution to provide AT&T's enterprise customers with near real-time insights from industrial IoT data by utilizing AT&T's IoT network and the IBM Watson Data platform. Enterprise customers can use the information from AT&T and IBM's integrated analytics technology to identify potential machine malfunctions or failures, analyze error codes in equipment, monitor pallet and product location in real-time, and more. (See Seen & Heard: AT&T Teams Up With IBM on IoT Analytics and AT&T & IBM Partner for New IoT Analytics Tech.) In this Q&A, Telco Transformation spoke with Mobeen Khan, assistant vice president of Strategy and Product Management for AT&T IoT Solutions, about what this collaboration will mean for AT&T and its enterprise customers. Telco Transformation: Last year AT&T and IBM combined AT&T Flow Designer -- an IoT development tool -- with the Watson IoT Platform and the IBM Bluemix cloud platform. Was that a prerequisite for integrating the IBM Watson Data Platform into AT&T's IoT capabilities for enterprise customers? Mobeen Khan: Yes, it's the next iteration. The two companies have decades of history working on many innovations and products, particularly addressing different aspects of the market and working jointly on a lot of new technologies. The IoT relationship started a couple of years ago to build on the core strengths and capabilities that each company brings to the table. Obviously, AT&T comes from point of providing connectivity solutions in a global, scalable, secure way, as well as an effective way to collect data from varied IoT devices. Technology is moving to the cloud. We're also moving our data to the cloud and collecting data off IoT devices, which is the future of mobility. IBM offers deep vertical expertise and analytics capabilities under the brand name of Watson IoT to make sense of the data we're collecting. That's what the partnership is about. TT: How do Watson's insights extend beyond standard analytics? Could you talk about the different types of industrial IoT data that can be tapped with this partnership? MK: Part of it is really mathematical in getting insights from the data. A lot of this is having that vertical knowledge to take that data and what it's telling you and apply it to the business needs. IBM not only has the technology and software but also consulting practices which enables it to take insight and build it into analytics. It has built up that expertise in various industries, including retail, healthcare, manufacturing, etc. For example, if you apply IoT insight to tractors, you can make predictions about maintenance schedules, warranties, comparative safety of drivers, etc. A lot of insight can be derived from usage data. Watson has vertical expertise on that kind of usage data. As more and more data is collected, models get more and more refined, and then customers come to recognize efficiencies. Think of tractor manufacturers. They may have IoT devices in the tractor. The data collected from the device can indicate levels outside norm. That data is sent through AT&T's cellular network to AT&T's platform where it is divided into an analytics system that assesses that the engine is about to fail. That opens up a trouble application that a service person can react to and then fix the tractor. TT: What are the cost savings to customers that utilize this integrated platform to detect equipment anomalies via connected devices, for example? MK: We don't yet have exact numbers. A lot of these analytics are at the beginning stage, especially in IoT. But here's the value that it brings to customers: between AT&T and IBM, customers have the whole stack integrated. Over the last year, we put in the necessary integration. Before, customers would have to procure solutions from many different places and hire someone to put it all together. We're taking a lot of the friction out of integration, and shortening the deployment cycles that a customer would face significantly. That's really the value that the partnership bring to the enterprise customers. We've already done all of the heavy lifting to make sure all of these technologies can work together. TT: Which industries are currently making use of IoT insights? MK: For IoT, there are certain use cases where we see the market maturing faster and adoption happening faster. That holds true in particular for vehicle solutions, fleet management, usage based insurance, asset management -- which includes supply chain management -- as well as asset health and management. Healthcare and smart cities are also a major growth area for IoT. The latter involves infrastructure management, data on bridges and tunnels, predictive maintenance, smart meters, parking, traffic light optimization and improved security. We also see growth in wearables, both for industrial and consumer use. Those are some of the areas in which we see IoT adoption in the marketplace and where we will apply IBM Watson. TT: Is AT&T doing any of this internally? MK: Yes, AT&T has an internal big data team that deploys analytics to improve our own operation. For example, we have a very large fleet of trucks. We are now managing our own trucks through our own IoT system. We're getting better data off those trucks, which helps us optimize dispatches to problem areas and allows us to predict scheduled maintenance for them. We found that we are saving money by applying that kind actionable insight and are planning to implement more in future. Another way we're using it is with remote access. We deploy generators at many of our sites. Now we're instrumenting them to make sure that we can test them remotely, and run diagnostics on them remotely to learn from the data on an automated system. Now, we no longer have to send someone out to check it once a year but get the data regularly to deal with it proactively. That's a better and more accurate way of keeping tabs on our equipment. —Ariella Brown, Contributing Writer, Telco Transformation |
In part two of this Q&A, the carrier's group head of network virtualization, SDN and NFV calls on vendors to move faster and lead the cloudification charge.
It's time to focus on cloudification instead, Fran Heeran, the group head of Network Virtualization, SDN and NFV at Vodafone, says.
5G must coexist with LTE, 3G and a host of technologies that will ride on top of it, says Arnaud Vamparys, Orange Network Labs' senior vice president for radio networks.
The OpenStack Foundation's Ildiko Vancsa suggests that 5G readiness means never abandoning telco applications and infrastructures once they're 'cloudy enough.'
IDC's John Delaney talks about how telecom CIOs are addressing the relationship between 5G, automation and virtualization, while cautioning that they might be forgetting the basics.
On-the-Air Thursdays Digital Audio
ARCHIVED | December 7, 2017, 12pm EST
Orange has been one of the leading proponents of SDN and NFV. In this Telco Transformation radio show, Orange's John Isch provides some perspective on his company's NFV/SDN journey.
Special Huawei Video
Huawei Network Transformation Seminar The adoption of virtualization technology and cloud architectures by telecom network operators is now well underway but there is still a long way to go before the transition to an era of Network Functions Cloudification (NFC) is complete. |
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