Kathy Gibson reports from CeBIT, Hanover – Samsung has launched a new brand, Samsung Business, that brings together the company’s business solutions portfolio, uniting the Knox, smart signage and printing solutions divisions along with a number of other enterprise offerings.
Dr WP Hong, president of Samsung Electronics, announced the move during his keynote address at CeBIT in Hanover yesterday.
He also spoke about how the Internet of Things is poised to make a profound impact on our lives.
“IoT is similar to the Internet and mobile revolutions in that it will change our lives. But I believe that the impact from IoT will be even more profound.
“There is a vast number of devices that will be connected and exchanging information,” Dr Hong adds. “Right now there are 15-billion things connected to the Internet – and this in only 2% of the devices that could be connected.”
The IoT will bring about a number of significant benefits, he says. “An Internet of connected objects could free us from routing tasks, allowing us to focus on what human beings are good at: generating ideas.
“This has tremendous implications in terms of cost reductions, increased productivity and enhanced value for customers.”
To an extent, the IoT revolution is already underway. Dr Hong points out that a recent survey of executives showed that 95% of them plan to adopt IoT in one way or another in the next three years.
“The IoT is set to bring about changes on a grand scale, offering tangible improvements to things like health, fitness, the home and transportation. And Samsung’s IoT solutions are moving into these areas.”
Despite the opportunities, Dr Hong points out that there are some serious obstacles that still need to be overcome for IoT to become a reality.
The three key challenges, he believes, are platform compatibility, data insight; and security.
“These are all formidable challenges, but this means there are opportunities for those willing and able to overcome them,” he says. “At Samsung, we see the opportunity clearly and are excited about it.”
Samsung is one of the many companies at CeBIT that are partnering to help bring IoT into the mainstream. “We are very keen to work with partners on bringing IoT into the enterprise,” Dr Hong says.
Addressing the need for platform compatibility, he says Samsung has thousands of developers working on a flexible, open and common platform called SmartThings, which will also enable new SmartHome and SmartOffice solutions.
The company is also participating in efforts to drive open platforms in manufacturing, transportation and smart city developments.
“Transportation is one area where we are making meaningful progress,” Dr Hong says. “The car connects many different pieces of our lives and we supporting the automobile manufacturers to make the car a machine that supports maximum interoperability.”
Some examples include the new BMWs that link up the Samsung’s Gear watch, and a project with Volkswagen to enable a cost-effective smart car.
The whole point of the IoT is to gather various streams of data in order to make considered business decisions, but Dr Hong points out that the petabytes of data that will pour in from the IoT will be meaningless if there isn’t the ability to analyse it effectively.
“Without adequate tools, knowledge and experience the analysis required could take weeks – and no-one has weeks; we need the answers in seconds.”
Samsung is partnering on this issue as well, signing agreements with vertical solution providers to bring meaningful analysis to various industry sectors.
“An example of this is the Samsung digital health platform,” Dr Hong says. “A number of healthcare organisations are already participating and together we are accelerating the next generation of healthcare.”
The intelligent building industry is another example of where smart analytics can make a difference. Buildings are responsible for about 40% of the US’s energy consumption, and about half of this can be attributed to the air conditioners, Dr Hong says.
“We are developing algorithms to maintain ideal environments by monitoring the ventilation, temperature and humidity,” he says. “This optimises the air conditioning usage and can save up to 30% of the energy consumed by these systems.”
Security is still one of the primary concerns when it comes to the IoT – and for good reason: at least 70% of the data flowing over the IoT is unencrypted and about 60% of the connected devices don’t encrypt while updating software.
“In addition, many IoT devices are in mission-critical places like healthcare and finance, so there is scope for huge damage arising from malicious attacks.”
To help counteract the threat, Samsung has expanded its Knox and Knox Workspace security solutions to address more devices – and some of the newer Samsung devices include Knox as standard out of the box.
Despite the challenges, Dr Hong believes industry efforts to overcome them will prevail and IoT will become a major disrupter in the enterprise space.
“You can either embrace the change right away, or risk falling behind the competition,” he says. “Samsung hopes to bring the possibilities of enterprise IoT to the market through the creation of a healthy ecosystem that will support our own products and non-Samsung products as well.”
