Introduction OEMs in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) tend to look at the consumer IoT as less serious or important, seeing consumer IoT products as fancy toys, at best. After all, IIoT connectivity, which grew from machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies, has been around far longer than the consumer IoT. But ironically, the consumer IoT holds a number of important lessons that IIoT OEMs need to learn if they want to reap the full benefits of connectivity. Sierra Monitor Corporation recognizes the importance of applying these consumer IoT lessons to the IIoT and offers a comprehensive and secure IIoT On-Ramp Suite designed to accelerate the transformation of industrial devices into smart, cloud-connected products. The IIoT On-Ramp Suite includes: FieldServer Gateway Application Engine running local applications FieldPoP™ device cloud FieldPoP integration with leading data analytics cloud platforms

What’s more, Sierra Monitor has outlined four simple steps to guide OEMs along the pathway toward a smart and cloud-connected IIoT environment.

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What the Consumer IoT Can Teach the IIoT The traditional distinctions between consumer and industrial IoT environments are how the devices are organized and controlled, and where the intelligence lies. Typical consumer IoT devices—such as smart thermostats, door locks, lighting, or refrigerators—are independent devices that operate in a non-hierarchical fashion. Each device is smart and has its own applications, a complete IoT stack (for the device, the cloud, and applications to access and control that device), and its own cloud point of presence. For example, the Fitbit activity wristband tracks a user’s daily activity, including the number of steps taken, calories burned, distance traveled, and sleeping patterns. All of this data wirelessly syncs from the device to the user’s account in the Fitbit cloud, which is then accessible on a smartphone or computer through the Fitbit application—where a user can see trends and set goals. Consumer IoT devices do not depend upon a home management or home supervisory system for their intelligence or control. In a real sense, each consumer IoT device has its own “voice.”

Consumer IoT vs. Industrial IoT

In contrast, IIoT devices traditionally are subservient and function in a hierarchical system, with intelligence and control resting with some kind of supervisory system, such as a building management system (BMS) or supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. The supervisory system acts as a hub and the brain for

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the IIoT devices, and only the vendor of the supervisor has visibility into the workings of its products.

What if each IIoT device went from being semi-smart and subservient to being smart and cloud-connected, with local intelligence and its own cloud connection?

IIoT devices themselves are therefore only semi-smart. Vendors of the subservient IIoT devices usually are blind to their products’ operations within the industrial facility. Instead, IIoT devices must rely on gateways or bridges to provide integration, transport, and the data model—which makes it difficult for their owners to have direct knowledge or control of their devices. Consider how electric sub-meters might be deployed in a building. The data from sub-meters is likely to be incorporated into a building energy management supervisory system through a gateway. The vendor who developed these sub-meters probably has no visibility into any of their devices, and most likely doesn’t know their products are installed in that building given the use of distribution intermediaries. Now, think about which vendor has better insight into product usage and enjoys greater mindshare and loyalty with their customer: Fitbit or the vendor who makes electric sub-meters? The question for IIoT OEMs is this: What if each IIoT device went from being semi-smart and subservient to being smart and cloud-connected, with local intelligence and its own cloud connection? In other words, what if IIoT devices began taking cues from their consumer IoT cousins? What if the electric sub-meter were more like the Fitbit wristband? Benefits of Smart, Cloud-Connected IIoT Devices Both OEMs/vendors and facilities/users of IIoT devices can benefit from consumer IoT-style device cloud connectivity. Going from a subservient device that talks only to a facility’s management or supervisory system, to a smart device that is connected to the device owner’s own point of presence in the cloud is a big leap. Having a point of presence in the cloud—something that even the most frivolous consumer IoT products possess—enables remote management and analytics, which is where the benefits of connectivity begin to shine.

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For vendors who make devices (the OEMs), smart devices connected to a cloud point of presence improve their competitiveness. OEMs can:

• Gain visibility into their installed base of products.

• Deliver better service and support as a result of real-time visibility.

• Identify opportunities to improve their products by analyzing real-world product usage data.

• Consider offering their products in an “as-a-service” model. In other words, sell “product-as-a-service”.

The benefits are not one-sided. Facility managers and end users see improved operational benefits when, smart devices connect to a cloud point of presence. Facility managers gain:

• An unfiltered view of each cloud-connected asset within the facility, as opposed to the compressed and possibly incomplete view of the facility they might get from the management or supervisory system.

• Better service and product quality from vendors of the cloud-connected smart devices.

• Insights into the operations of their facility from “analytics”, which in turn allows them to identify improvement opportunities.

• The ability to try new business models, for example, shifting costs from capital expenditures to operating expenses when they move from consuming products to consuming products-as-a-service.

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A Brief Overview of the IIoT On-Ramp Suite The IIoT On-Ramp Suite consists of the FieldServer Gateway, Application Engine, FieldPoP device cloud, and FieldPoP integration with leading data analytics cloud platforms. Sierra Monitor’s FieldServer family of gateways and routers are used by system integrators and OEMs to enable local and remote monitoring and control of assets and facilities. Supporting more than 140 protocols and certified by the industry’s highest standards, FieldServer Gateways and Routers connect devices within building facilities locally. Sierra Monitor’s Application Engine is a secure and flexible programming environment that runs on the FieldServer Gateway. The Application Engine hosts a set of local applications that simplify network management, providing visual status information about an OEM’s devices that connect to the gateway, collecting and trending important data points generated by the OEM’s devices, and logging various operator actions. The centerpiece of the IIoT On-Ramp Suite is Sierra Monitor’s FieldPoP device cloud. FieldPoP is cloud-delivered software-as-a-service that works with the FieldServer family of protocol gateways and routers to help OEMs cost-effectively manage their deployed assets and provide superior support and maintenance to their customers. Offered as a subscription service, the FieldPoP device cloud lets OEMs securely register and manage their fleet of deployed gateways and routers; ensure secure user credential management that is synchronized between the cloud service and field devices; manage cloud-based notifications of relevant events; and securely and remotely access, from any location, field-resident gateways and routers and the local applications running on those assets. The FieldPoP device cloud also serves as a connector or middleware to third-party business applications (such as a product maintenance package or a customer relationship management application) and to powerful analytics cloud platforms that provide visualization, or machine learning.

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Four Easy Steps to Transforming Industrial Devices Before embarking on the four steps, it’s important to understand something about different kinds of clouds. Sierra Monitor’s FieldPoP is centered on a device cloud model. A device cloud is distinct from an enterprise cloud (e.g. Microsoft Azure, Salesforce.com, Google cloud platform) or IoT cloud (e.g., PTC/ThingWorx, mnubo, Devicify, SeeControl) that performs data analytics, visualization, and other more advanced functionalities.

Sierra Monitor Corporation’s IIoT On-Ramp Suite

The device cloud does “blue-collar work” such as recognizing the devices in the field, establishing secure connections with those devices, registering them, and performing other basic and necessary functions. Sierra Monitor’s four easy steps for leveraging the IIoT On-Ramp Suite to transform an OEM’s industrial devices into smart, cloud-connected devices are:

1. Get the OEM devices on an IP network. Connect them to an existing BMS/SCADA/PLC by adding a FieldServer Gateway. FieldServer Gateways are used as protocol converters between devices that speak different protocol languages, such as Modbus and BACnet. OEMs can embed the FieldServer Gateway within their device and connect to the network, speaking the appropriate protocol.

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For example, an electric sub-meter OEM selling their products into a data center might bundle the FieldServer Gateway with their products. With the FieldServer, their sub-meters that normally speak Modbus are able to communicate to the building management system (BMS) using BACnet/IP or to the data center information management (DCIM) system using SNMP.

2. Make the gateway smarter. Add useful and visual applications on the FieldServer Gateway by adding local applications on the Application Engine. Web-based local applications running on the FieldServer Gateway provide a rich user interface to the OEM’s devices that are connected to the gateway and make the OEM’s devices more intelligent. These local web applications run in the powerful Application Engine software environment on the FieldServer Gateway. The local applications can be accessed by browser-based devices that are on the same LAN as the gateway. They let OEMs and device owners drill down into each device individually to get specific status information, including seeing what’s happening in the present, the recent past, or historically. Local applications can also trace the causes of certain actions or set specific data points with the right permissions. As a result, the local applications are useful to the installation and service technicians that work for the OEM or work for its dealer network.

Historian Application

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For instance, a boiler can provide a lot of useful data about temperature, steam flow, or pressure that’s not visible on a BMS. However, access to this data could be of paramount importance to the OEM that makes boilers so they can provide predictive maintenance, or roll out a truck with the right spare parts when a boiler fails and needs to be fixed. Local applications such as the System View—a dashboard that lets the boiler owner and the OEM (monitoring from a remote site) visually monitor their boiler(s) to see on/off statuses or maintenance intervals—or the Historian —an application that logs and displays selected data points about the boiler such as temperature and setpoints—bring voice to the boiler and ensure that this voice is heard.

3. Bridge the field devices to the cloud. Bundle a cloud point of presence—a device cloud—with the FieldServer Gateway by setting up the OEM on FieldPoP and connecting the OEM-provided FieldServer Gateways to FieldPoP. The FieldPoP device cloud provides OEMs and their customers – the facility managers – with an asset management dashboard in the cloud. The benefits of this step are asset visibility, management, and consolidation; secure asset access with no firewall dependencies through an HTTPS tunnel; and consolidation and distribution of notifications to specific people. In this step, OEM support teams can operate remotely at a distance from their devices, gaining secure access to all the features embedded in the FieldServer Gateway. This remote operation takes service and support capabilities to the next level.

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For instance, from anywhere in the world, the OEM’s service or support personnel can set up accounts on FieldPoP for their staff or for their customers. Once their gateways are registered with FieldPoP, they can remotely access the gateway-resident local applications and FieldServer GUI configuration utility through FieldPoP. They can also manage software upgrades or troubleshoot issues remotely to minimize unnecessary field visits. From there, OEMs and their customers can receive cloud-based notifications on alarm conditions for example, through texting and email; view reports, exportable as CSV- or PDF-formatted files, to pull out, store, or share information; enable security and accountability through audit logs that provide traceability of actions in the device cloud; and use data logging to archive and distribute data to other clouds for deep analytics.

Think of FieldPoP as doing the dirty work of field device connection, such as device management and security.

FieldPoP Home Page

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4. Connect the device cloud to your business applications. Connect FieldPoP to other third-party cloud platforms in use by the OEM. FieldPoP delivers tremendous functionality, but in the end the device cloud is only one player in the much larger IIoT ecosystem.

Think of FieldPoP as doing the dirty work of field device connection, such as device management and security. Acting as the data middleware and staging layer, FieldPoP passes field data from the FieldServer Gateway to third-party cloud platforms for business and analytics applications. But why would an OEM want to integrate field device data with an application and analytics cloud platform, such as Salesforce.com? Most likely, the OEM’s finance, sales, or marketing teams decided to use Salesforce.com or a similar cloud platform to manage their customer reports and cloud analytics projects. The OEM’s engineering team that is deploying the FieldServer and FieldPoP needs to seamlessly integrate and work with these bigger cloud decisions already made by their companies. For example, if an OEM wanted to merge device status and alarm information with corresponding customer record information, they would likely expect to do this in their Salesforce.com CRM system.

Typical Third-Party Platforms

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It’s at the deep analytics level that new insights can emerge that lead to improvements in product quality, innovations in products and services, and the identification of new revenue opportunities. Because the FieldPoP device cloud fits happily into the business applications that surround it, it can act as the doorway to the richer rewards of smart cloud connectivity.

Conclusion: Optimizing the IIoT Opportunity IIoT connectivity predates the consumer IoT, so the temptation is to assume that the IIoT is “ahead” of the consumer IoT in every way. But in fact, the IIoT world’s long-standing model of hierarchical control, with semi-smart and subservient devices mediated by a centralized management or supervisory agent, is hindering OEMs from taking advantage of the many advantages of true connectivity. The IIoT can learn important lessons from the consumer IoT, particularly in breaking free of the hierarchical model and adopting the consumer IoT approach: smart devices that have their own point of presence in the cloud, which enables OEMs to become more competitive and facilities to improve their operations. The IIoT On-Ramp Suite provides a comprehensive, secure, low-risk path for creating smart, cloud-connected products. Before embarking on this journey, an OEM must determine the precise business opportunities they want to achieve through the IIoT—whether that means improving service and support, knowing more precisely where all its connected devices are located and what they’re actually doing, or gaining the insights that will lead to better products. Then, Sierra Monitor’s four easy steps, using its IIoT On-Ramp Suite, can make it simple rather than daunting to get there. For more information on Sierra Monitor’s four-step process for turning semi-smart products into smart, cloud-connected products using the IIoT On-Ramp Suite, watch the “Taking Advantage of the IIoT Opportunity” webinar. Or contact Sierra Monitor to request a free consultation to develop a personalized roadmap toward a smart, cloud-connected future.

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About Sierra Monitor Corporation Sierra Monitor Corporation addresses the industrial and commercial facilities management market with Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions that connect and protect high-value infrastructure assets. The company’s FieldServer brand of protocol gateways is used by system integrators and OEMs to enable local and remote monitoring and control of assets and facilities. With more than 200,000 products, supporting over 140 protocols, installed in commercial and industrial facilities, FieldServer is the industry’s leading multi-protocol gateway. Sierra Monitor’s Sentry IT fire and gas detection solutions are used by industrial and commercial facilities managers to protect their personnel and assets. Sentry IT branded controllers, sensor modules, and software are installed at thousands of facilities such as natural gas vehicle fueling and maintenance stations, wastewater treatment plants, oil and gas refineries and pipelines, parking garages, US Navy ships, and underground telephone vaults. Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley in Milpitas, California, Sierra Monitor was founded in 1979 and has been a public company (SRMC) since 1989. By combining its distinguished track record in industrial sensing and automation with emerging IoT technologies such as cloud connectivity, big data, and analytics, Sierra Monitor is at the forefront of the emerging IIoT trend. For more information, please visit www.sierramonitor.com. Contact Information Sierra Monitor Corporation 1991 Tarob Court Milpitas, CA 95035 +1 408-262-6611 info@sierramonitor.com

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