FIELD AGENTS
Connecting the things
As IoT becomes more popular, how can it benefit businesses and become a seamless addition to the workplace?
The advent of mobile signals has brought about a new way that we connect with each other. From solitary voice capabilities and SMS texting to today where video and voice messages are sent every day and the phone call has been replaced by a video call. But while the technology continues to change, the signals that they take advantage of will stay the same. A clear example of this is the way 3G airwaves are being merged into the 5G offering. As airwaves become less useful to the data- hungry devices we all have in our pockets, the Internet of Things can take advantage of the connectivity that, a decade ago, was considered astounding. In particular, field agents working away from the office wifi can look to IoT devices to gather data that would otherwise have had to be done in person. From there the data processing can allow businesses to come to decisions faster. “IoT sensors are ushering in a new era for field agents,” Pascoal De Oliveira, UK MD of Babble said. “With the ability to monitor diverse metrics such as temperature, motion, and even such things as timing data at sporting events, these sensors provide real- time insights for field agents to make more strategic decisions. “For instance, Babble provided IoT sensors to the 2023 UCI World Cycling Championships to ensure timing data could successfully be accessed and shared between equipment across 13 challenge platforms.” Using data That old adage of businesses loving certainty certainly plays into the hands of IoT devices that harvest the information needed to make better decisions. According to a report published by Fortune Business Insights last year, the global Internet of Things market is projected to grow from $662.21 billion in 2023 to $3,352.97 billion by 2030, at a compound annual growth rate of 26.1%.
As businesses get a grip on this growth, Michael Croft-White, Engineering Director for Telemetry at Canonical said that managing these devices is the next challenge to hurdle. “To keep tabs on devices, organisations should have complete visibility and control, even as their fleet grows,” said Croft-White. “IoT devices are often deployed in remote or inaccessible corners of factories, buildings and vehicles, so managing the device fleet remotely is essential. The device management challenge is increased when they are deployed with unreliable network connections, so real-time communication is not always possible. “A tried-and-tested approach to IoT device management is to use a messaging protocol like MQTT, DDS, XMPP, AMQT, to communicate with the devices. Additionally, edge computing allows companies to bring computation, storage and AI capabilities closer to their fleet. Digital twins also facilitate remote management by mirroring devices in the cloud as virtual representations, enabling monitoring and diagnostics without direct connection.”
Pascoal De Oliveira UK MD
babble.cloud
Babble provided IoT sensors to the 2023 UCI World Cycling Championships to ensure timing data could successfully be accessed and shared between equipment across 13 challenge platforms
Integrating the things As there is a need to manage these
connected devices, it opens the door to that management on a collaboration platform. But as Croft-White added, “the relationship between IoT and collaboration tools is only just getting started. Early integrations are clumsy - they require technical know-how to set up and lack seamless interoperability, but the potential is tremendous. “Taking your observability and telemetry directly into your collaboration platform would allow teams to monitor production lines in Slack, analyse sensor data in applications such as Teams, or collaborate across platforms. “Vendors are working to make integrations seamless for non-technical users. With standardised APIs and pre-built connectors, unified IoT collaboration could reach its full potential.”
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