Although I did not have a great deal of time to walk the floor and visit every booth to learn about all the new (and not so new) products and technologies exhibited at the Sensors Expo, I did glean the sense that wireless sensor networks and cloud computing are gaining traction as users increasingly embrace the benefits of wireless connectivity to obtain data and also grapple with what to do with all the data being collected, analyzed and managed.
Based on extensive research from VDC's Wireless Industrial Networking Products research we know about the many benefits and factors which are driving demand for wireless connectivity and sensor monitoring is an application well suited to benefit from the usage of wireless networks. Cloud computing is supposed to provide the user with greater performance capabilities, real-time analysis and data storage capabilities and the possibility for a 3rd party to manage part of, or all of, the data process of collection, analysis and storage.
Companies such as Digi International and MicroStrain were highlighting offerings which leveraged both wireless sensor networks and cloud computing and there were several other companies that were highlighting a wireless sensor network solution leveraging an 802.11x network standard, an 802.15.4 (ISA-100, Wireless HART, Zigbee, etc.) network standard and/or a proprietary narrow band solution (2.4 GHz band, 900 MHz band, etc.)
VDC will be launching a new project on wireless sensor networks later this year and the impact of cloud computing and who manages all the data being acquired from the burgeoning use of wireless sensor networks will no doubt be part of the research discussion. We are very much interested in learning about what issues, questions and market forces are of greatest interest to the marketplace and welcome any feedback you can share or questions/issues to consider.
A discussion about for which applications users may choose to leverage cloud computing's capabilities is a blog for another day.
Comments