Several hundred visitors focused on "connected intelligence" at the Iconics Connected Intelligence Customer Summit 2017 on Oct. 30-Nov. 2 in Providence, R.I. They took in dozens of presentations and exhibits, and learned, not just to understand the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), but how to take the greatest advantage of it for their applications and organizations.
“Connected intelligence is our theme at this year’s summit, and it has a dual meaning for us,” said Russ Agrusa, president and CEO of Iconics, which was recently named the 2017 Microsoft Application Development Partner of the Year and is a five-time winner of the Microsoft Partner of the Year award. “First, it refers to our extensive suite of automation software, and how it provides out-of-the-box solutions for visualization, mobility, historical data collection, analytics and IIoT. The second point is that over the past 30 years, Iconics has built a community of partners and customers who have the opportunity to meet our software designers and other employees, and have one-on-one discussions about IIoT, Industrie 4.0, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and the latest advances in automation software."
[sidebar id =1]Attendees explored and tried out multiple Iconics advances first-hand, including its new IoTWorX software suite designed for IIoT and Industrie 4.0 applications. IoTWorX combines software technology with affordable IoT hardware devices to create cloud-ready solutions for energy, building automation, manufacturing and industrial applications. Iconics maintains that data is the "new currency," and that its long-time mission of "making the invisible visible" is further enhanced by IIoT and wearable, hands-free devices. Iconics provides integrated support for Microsoft’s HoloLens holographic computing headset, RealWear's HMT-1 head-mounted Android computer and other new virtual-reality (VR) devices.
"We want to make the IIoT and its devices more natural to use—and hands-free, too," explained Agrusa. "Connected intelligence means linking to the real world, and then historizing, analyzing and mobilizing data."
Other demonstrations and releases during the conference included:
• Genesis64, Version 10.95, HMI/SCADA and building automation software suite that includes what's reported to be the world’s first 3D, holographic machine interface (HMI), which can be used with the HoloLens self-contained holographic computing device. This combination of Iconics software with Microsoft hardware allows users to visualize real-time data and analytics KPIs in both 2D and 3D holograms.
• Smart Energy AnalytiX software-as-a-service (SaaS) combines Iconics' expertise with energy management software, FDDWorX fault detection/diagnostics and KPIWorX self-service dashboarding tool technologies into a cloud portal-based subscription solution.
• Hyper Historian data historian with Microsoft Azure data lake for more data storage, archiving and retrieval. Iconics reports that, when real-time “hot” data is collected at the edge by IoT devices and other remote collectors, it can be securely transmitted to “warm” data historians for mid-term archiving and replay, and archived to “cold” long-term data storage systems such as data lakes, Hadoop or Azure HD Insight.
