On Target: Embedded Systems

CES 2016, Part 3: Wireless IoT Technologies Proliferate

Another of the trends that stood out most to VDC at this year’s CES was the ubiquity of wireless technologies. It was rare that any connected product on display did not include wireless, the most prevalent types being Bluetooth Smart, Wi-Fi, and ZigBee. Bluetooth Smart, also known as Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), is ideal for many wearable devices that will communicate with the user’s nearby smartphone. Wi-Fi is best for IoT devices in a home or small business environment, leveraging existing routers and networking for other PC and Internet communications. ZigBee is a short range mesh network with a communications... Read more →

CES 2016, Part 2: Automotive Technologies Move Forward

At this year’s CES, booths were brimming with IoT products such as home automation devices, connected audio and video gear, pet trackers, and fitness monitors. But one of the trends that stood out most to VDC was the prevalence of automotive technology, which came to the forefront as never before. Two of the keynote speeches at CES featured heads of major carmakers. One of the keynotes was by Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, although more than half of her presentation was essentially a live infomercial for the 2017 Chevy Bolt all-electric vehicle, including a bit of a cheap-shot at... Read more →

CES 2016, Part 1: Drills, Holes, and Holemakers

Since long before the turn of the millennium, every January has brought to Las Vegas the humongous trade show and conference known as CES. Those three letters no longer officially stand for Consumer Electronics Show, but that’s how many people in the industry still refer to it. The very term “consumer electronics” is usually considered a category of devices, as in a department in retail stores where consumers buy their boxes of TVs, audio and video players, cameras, etc. But as the industry has evolved, more and more of the products have included (or in some cases wholly become) intangibles... Read more →

IoT Market Complexity Demands Buyer Personas

The complexity of the market for IoT products and services creates enormous challenges for the IoT solution marketer. An unlimited set of applications, a complex ecosystem of partners and channels, a wide range of decision makers and influencers, and a continuously changing competitive set can leave the marketer forever chasing his tail. Critical decisions about the content, placement, and timing of marketing messages become extraordinarily difficult in the face of these complex and dynamic conditions. Observing these challenges, VDC undertook a disciplined search for tools and methods that could help IoT marketers think and act more strategically, and achieve better... Read more →

Community Development Critical for IoT Success

The IoT has democratized product engineering and innovation. Increasing device connectivity and open APIs are enabling new types of organizations and developers to innovate in a world previously confined to engineers with highly specialized skill sets. While the traditional embedded ecosystem and its engineers will remain at the heart of the IoT device movement, this new cadre of potential developers and entrepreneurs comprise an important part of the creative base designing future IoT systems. And from giant conferences to local maker fairs, the technology ecosystem has recognized the importance fostering the growth of this “citizen developer” community. In fact, VDC... Read more →

The Battle for the IoT is Being Fought in the MCU Software Ecosystem

System resource restrictions around memory and processing power were one of the fundamental issues that first fueled the development of the embedded operating system ecosystem. Overtime, however, the relative importance of these issues diminished in favor of more robust offerings capable of enabling sophisticated user interfaces and more advanced device connectivity. Now, however, the IoT has catalyzed a new level of market demand for OSs that can operate on MCU-class devices. Most Important Characteristics When Selecting Primary Operating System (Percent of Respondents Indicating MCU Used on Current Project) The sheer volume of small-footprint devices is enticing to silicon and software... Read more →

LogMeIn Helps Grow the IoT Pie at Xively Xperience

Cloud service provider LogMeIn hosted its first Xively Xperience conference on October 1-2, 2015 in Boston. As an invitation-only event, it attracted approximately 200 C-level executives and industry experts for keynotes and panel discussions on the current and future state of the IoT. Although the conference included several demos of technology from LogMeIn and it’s IoT cloud service Xively.com, by and large it was devoted to the IoT as a whole, and not merely a sales pitch for LogMeIn/Xively. As such, it was more an early market effort to help grow the whole IoT pie, rather than carve out a... Read more →

Security Comes to the Forefront at IoT Security Conference 2015

Members of the VDC Team spent the last two days at the inaugural IoT Security event on the beautiful Boston waterfront, where Steve Hoffenberg, VDC’s Director of IoT & Embedded Technology, spoke alongside a diverse and distinguished panel of guests that included various leaders of government, research, and industry. One of the main themes that emerged throughout the two-day conference was the growing importance and adoption of Security as a Service. If it makes more sense from both a financial and an operations perspective to outsource computing, storage, applications, and infrastructure to specialized providers in order to capitalize on economies... Read more →

VDC's Steve Hoffenberg Speaking at IoT Security Conference in Boston

VDC's Director of IoT & Embedded Technology will be speaking at the IoT Security conference in Boston, September 22-23. He'll be hosting an Analyst Breakfast Briefing roundtable discussion on Wednesday, September 23, and also on that same day, he'll be participating as a panelist in the session entitled, "Maximizing Technology to Safeguard the Business of IoT." Check out the full conference info at www.iotsecurityevent.com. If you plan to attend and would like to connect with Steve there, contact him at [email protected]. Read more →

Lingering Thoughts from NIWeek 2015

VDC’s IoT and Embedded Technologies team recently attended NIWeek 2015 in Austin, TX. National Instruments (NI) put on an excellent conference and we had the opportunity to take in a great deal. There were inspiring and informative keynote presentations, great partner stories, the heat, interesting panel sessions, helpful one-on-one meetings with NI executives, the strange layout of the Austin Convention Center (it allegedly has a floor 2, but I’m not buying that), demos on the exhibit floor…and, well, did I mention the heat? The IoT / IIoT Centric Focus of NIWeek Regardless of the format – keynote, panels, demos, 1:1’s... Read more →