 | Issue: | India 2014 |
| Article no.: | 4 | |
| Topic: | The language of machines | |
| Author: | Sunil Khanna | |
| Title: | President and Managing Director | |
| Organisation: | Emerson Network Power, India. | |
| PDF size: | 224KB |
About author
Sunil Khanna is the President and Managing Director of Emerson Network Power, based in Thane, Maharashtra, India. He was appointed to the role in September 2012, having served as Managing Director of the Emerson Process Management business in India. Sunil’s primary focus at Emerson Network Power is to drive the organization towards growth and profitability, in line with Emerson’s strategic direction and business ethics. He is also tasked with organizational development and talent management, to sustain long term growth and enhance the company’s competitive edge in the market place. Sunil had joined Emerson Process Management in India in 2004 and was appointed MD in 2006.
Prior to Emerson, he was engaged with ABB India and held various leadership positions including vice president – automation technology. He has a cumulative experience of over 30 years in the Industrial and IT sectors. Sunil has vast international work experience including postings in Singapore, Indonesia, UK and USA.
Sunil has been a strong advocate for the customer. He is one of the Founding members of the Automation Industry Association and has led the trade-body as President from 2008 to 2010. He was elected a Member of CII National Executive Council in 2009-2010, as is currently a member of the Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT) and CII Western Zone Council, on Green Initiative & Employable Education.
Sunil holds a Master of Technology (M. Tech) in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Kanpur and a Bachelor of Technology (B. Tech) also in Electrical Engineering from IIT-BHU, Varanasi. He additionally has a Graduate degree from the Emerson Leadership Program.
Article abstract
M2M solutions for the Power industry take advantage of automation and mobility to save considerable costs of human involvement. Such solutions bring together new wireless M2M devices as sensors, network servers to manage communication, data centres to safely store large volumes of data, and a management system that can also take advantage of the business intelligence. The biggest challenge now is integration and interoperation between the system components, to allow utilizing standard mobile communications securely, flexible Cloud storage and sophisticated business analytics.
Full Article
Very often we are so engrossed with our daily routine that we fail to realize how technology has been impacting our lives. Be it automated ticketing system, smart cards, electronic payment models or wireless communication: how often do we take a moment to marvel at the intricacies of modern day technology. Imagine few years back, you walk into a busy café and wait a long time to place your order, while the person at the counter manually takes the order at a lethargic pace.
Today, you walk into a McDonald’s and wish to enjoy a burger with some fries, and you would like some extra cheese on the burger and a serving of Mayo on the side, the attendant smiles at you and enters this raw data in his computer. The next thing you see is your order on the screen behind the attendant and that same screen is also displayed inside the Kitchen where another staff member will see the order and slide your meal towards your attendant. All this happens in less than a minute due to machines communication with each other. Similarly, technology is a part of all the facets of our life and increasingly making us automated in our day to day lives — no matter where we go, we can’t escape its impact.
Interestingly like humans, machines too, communicate with each other and we call it Machine To Machine communication (M2M), also known as ‘internet of things’. According to a Cisco study there will be more ‘things’ connected to the internet as compared to humans. By 2016, the forecast projects that there will be nearly 18.9 billion network connections―almost 2.5 connections for each person on earth, ― compared with 10.3 billion in 2011.
Proliferation of Tablets and M2M enabled utilities will be the major reason for this increasing number of connected devices. The scope for Internet and connected devices is increasing and is evident that it will be a focus area for everyone. In fact, a group of tech companies have formed an alliance called Internet.org; led by Mark Zuckerberg. They have taken the responsibility to bring the Internet to the world’s next unconnected five billion devices; the goal is to get everyone and everything connected. Many companies across industries, like oil, gas, mining and agriculture, are seeing significant efficiency and productivity gains from bringing data into the Enterprise from the field and acting upon that information in real-time. The chief expectation from M2M is enabling applications that boost productivity and competitiveness through increased efficiencies and cost-savings.
Experts predict that M2M will be the fastest growing industry in the technology sector. However, it has been around longer than most people realize. It’s history can be traced back to the early days of computer networking automation. It made a big impact when Siemens launched a GSM data module in 1995 to enable machines to communicate over wireless network. Later more sophisticated wireless solutions were developed, and now it has become a part of our lives.
M2M systems for the Power Industry are all about operational efficiency and not about novelty in terms of technology. The M2M system is a product that has an inelastic demand. The M2M facility eliminates the need for human interference and this significantly reduces expenditure and increases operational efficiency, thereby improving ROI (Return on Investment). M2M is a catalyst in another arena: embedded computing. The new M2M devices are wireless, and the hardware must include good receivers and transmitters, which can work without consuming much power.
The elements that have given rise to the M2M industry boom are the same factors which have also enabled a gamut of security threats. Declining hardware costs, widely available free software tools, increased computing power of devices and technology advancements have contributed an increased number of security risks. The key is to consider the security measures at the very beginning of M2M development. Only an integrated security approach, starting with customised system design, will effectively safeguard M2M solutions and ensure the economic success of it. Customised set-up of end-to-end security architecture is necessary to protect M2M implementations and influence passive, active and reactive security measures for wireless M2M solutions.
All these things indicate that M2M will also drive data consumption, in addition to making our lives simpler and more automated. All participants in the M2M supply chain – from chip makers to communication service supplier to application vendor – have the opportunity to forefront the growth which the M2M industry is witnessing. The M2M solution is multifaceted: smart devices that process data locally; intelligent gateways with advanced event processing capacity that enables local decision making and management of traffic between devices and the network; and decision support systems that analyse data to provide useful information to business users. The solution requires sophisticated data centre architecture to support the ever-increasing volumes of data that gets generated through M2M communications. To co-ordinate events effectively across the network at every layer, it is crucial to have a unified grid-to-chip solution to ensure data management is efficient and dependable.
It is essential to select data centre management that can rapidly deploy solutions that cost-effectively add data capacity, improve IT control and increase efficiency — which are the most common data centre objectives. These data centre solutions are expected to have advanced power, cooling and management systems to optimize efficiency, in IT environments of all sizes, and to manage the increased volumes of data that arise due to proliferation of M2M communications.
There is scope for monetary gain as well through Analytics based marketing. An M2M solution, which is made up of components including software applications, networks and physical hardware, suffers from lack of integration, which can be resolved to provide better analytics and add more value to the already valuable scope of this technology. Analytics completes M2M. The tendency to create separate IT and Hardware silos is not an optimal scenario, while combining the two is a great solution, which tracks and monitors each device usage and produces business intelligence. The combination of existing sensors output, machines with analytics and cloud data centres will enable smarter organisations. Data accumulated with the help of sensors in the infrastructure can be analysed by the IT systems to predict chances of damage, preventing loss of vital business information and identifying if there is a need to scale up infrastructure security.
Technology advancement does not come without challenges. Though the disadvantages of M2M products are few, the lack of interoperability emerges as the biggest challenge. Custom M2M devices are very difficult to communicate with, and modifying secure bespoke applications to enable using common communication channels is costly. The solution is choosing devices with an open platform like Android, which will help these devices to interoperate, thus increasing the efficiency of devices. Once the interoperability standards are set, it will be interesting to see how the market of M2M solutions will pick up swiftly.
