IoT Solutions World Congress Paves Way for Industrial IoT

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The Industrial Internet Consortium® (IIC), the global, member supported organization that promotes the accelerated growth of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), released the numbers for IoT Solutions World Congress, which ran from October 25 – 27, 2016 in Barcelona. The event was organized in a partnership between the IIC and Fira de Barcelona. It was largest global conference for industrial IoT, almost doubling last year’s conference statistics with more than 170 exhibitors from about 70 countries, 8,000 visitors and 2,600 congress attendees in 3,500 m2 net exhibition space.

“It was an honor and a privilege to work alongside the folks at Fira de Barcelona to help orchestrate the second edition of this amazing event focused on the industrial internet,” said Dr. Richard Soley, Executive Director, IIC. “Together, with a dozen program and 10 advisory committee members, we were able to assemble the best speakers/panelists the industry has to offer to talk about the many facets of industrial IoT. Without a doubt, IoT Solutions World Congress is ‘the’ conference for industrial IoT.” 

The congress featured more than 160 speakers, and more than 60 of the speakers/panelists were IIC members. The speakers/panelists provided their viewpoints on the ways in which IoT impacts industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, energy, utilities, transportation, and others. Of the 170 or so exhibitors at the congress, more than 30 were IIC members, and many IIC members were also sponsors. 

“We were honored to participate both as speakers and an exhibitor at this year’s IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona,” said Sam George, Partner Director, Azure IoT, Microsoft Corp. “We’re seeing an acceleration of IoT as enterprises realize the business revolution IoT technologies enable. We are committed to take our industry leading IoT portfolio to the next level, and continue to work with our ecosystem of partners and customers to transform their businesses.” 

To show real-world applications, IoT Solutions World Congress provided a dedicated Testbed Area with the top 10 testbeds in action. The testbeds were experimentation platforms deployed and tested in an environment that resembled real-world conditions to show how new technologies can be usefully deployed. Three IIC testbeds were among the top 10, including the Time Sensitive Networks for Flexible Manufacturing, the Communication & Control for Microgrid Applications, and the Smart Airline Baggage Management testbeds. Six IIC members’ solutions were also included in the 10 top testbeds. 

On October 26, 2016, the congress held an IoT Solutions Awards Gala to recognize the most innovative and impactful projects that were developed over the course of the year. The complete list of award winners included eight IIC members: 

• Best Solution for Energy/Utilities – *HP Enterprise, *National Instruments, *PTC, *ThingWorx, FlowServe, vuforia
• Best Solution for Transportation & Logistics – *InterDigital
• Best Solution for Healthcare – Telefonica
• Best Solution for Manufacturing – *Infineon, Mocana
• Best Testbed – IoT Works
• Best Innovation & Technology Solution – bitsm@art, libelium
• Best Business Transformation Solution – *Electric Imp, *Pitney Bowes

“Awarding our innovative customer, Pitney Bowes, as the best Business Transformation Solution for their SmartLink product was definitely a high point of IoTSWC for Electric Imp,” said Carol Schmitt, Head of Product Marketing, Electric Imp. "The accolade plus high-value networking and prospecting opportunities created by the IIC absolutely made IoTSWC one of our best marketing investments for the year.” 

About the Industrial Internet Consortium 

The Industrial Internet Consortium® (IIC™) is a global, member supported, organization that promotes the accelerated growth of the Industrial Internet of Things by coordinating ecosystem initiatives to securely connect, control and integrate assets and systems of assets with people, processes and data using common architectures, interoperability and open standards to deliver transformational business and societal outcomes across industries and public infrastructure. The Industrial Internet Consortium is managed by the Object Management Group (OMG).