Richard Soley's On The Road Blog

Richard Soley's On the Road Blog

This report combines my last two or so weeks of travel again, starting out (strangely enough!) in Boston. A few years ago, Mass Insight, a local not-for-profit supporting Massachusetts and New England regional efforts, started up an exceptional institution dedicated to bringing together local expertise in cybersecurity, and increasing that community to support local, regional, national and international cybersecurity activities. The Advanced Cyber Security Center, under the exceptional leadership of Michael Figueroa (with the support of Mass Insight's Bill Guenther), instituted local meetings of Chief Information Security Officers to share threat and attack information, as well as build expertise in the area. In addition, they hold a superb annual conference, now hosted in the iconic Federal Reserve Bank of Boston building. I was honored to be part of the program, focusing not only on Object Management Group® (OMG®) cybersecurity efforts and the Industrial Internet Consortium® (IIC™) Industrial Internet Security Framework but also the business of cybersecurity ― increasing competence across the board. Chaired by OMG and IIC member (and MITRE CIO/CISO) Joel Jacobs, the panel addressed about 250 cybersecurity leaders, mostly from the Boston area. The entire event, including an exceptional keynote from former United States National Security Advisor Richard Clarke, was extremely valuable.

I then found myself once again crossing the pond (some people call it the Atlantic Ocean) to Europe for the Industrial Internet of Things Europe 2017 conference in Munich. This smaller event featured primarily users of Internet of Things (IoT) technology looking to understand the coming disruptions in their markets ― not only manufacturing and production, but also agriculture, healthcare, energy and many other industries. I delivered a keynote on exactly that disruption, discussing coming standards (including OMG standards of course) driven by real experience (including of course the IIC testbed program). Though not able to stay for the entire event, I was able to understand more of the hopes and fears of disruption in many industries.

One of the main reasons to visit Munich is its amazing array of sausages.

 

Munich prepares for its Weinhachtsmarket (Christmas market) in the Marienplatz.

 Next stop on this particular world tour was Sofia, Bulgaria, at the specific request of the national cybersecurity advisor and old friend George Sharkov. It turns out that in previous lives, George and I just missed meeting each other: he was an Artificial Intelligence researcher (as was I) but in communist (COMECON) Bulgaria in the late ‘80s, trying to use the latest technology in his work. He apparently attempted to buy a 386 Hummingboard, one of the fastest AI systems in the US at the time ― it was made by A.I. Architects, of which I was the Chairman and CEO. I didn't know him at the time of course, and sadly had to turn down the order as our product included parts that were considered "dual use" (advanced technology controlled by the U.S. ITAR restrictions). Apparently he was able to buy one anyway, through a shell company in France. We discovered this 30 years later walking down the street in Moscow during a conference ― an unbelievable coincidence! As George points out, American U-2 spy planes used to take off and fly over Bulgaria and take photos; now they take off from NATO member country Bulgaria and fly over other countries. George and I are fast friends.

And George knows how to put on a conference. The Back to the Cyber Future 2017 conference was small, but attended by hand-selected, Bulgarian cybersecurity leaders. I focused my keynote on cybersecurity work under way at OMG, IIC and especially the Consortium for IT Software Quality™ which is disrupting the software quality and security landscape with standards supporting automated source code assurance. Clearly topical for this group and it was quite well received.

Focused on the world's problems and opportunities, DAVOS seeks to understand the future and present it to the assembled leadership. A tough multi-year process goes into developing those understandings, and it has been my honor and pleasure to be part of that process for the last two years as a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on the Digital Economy and Society. Clearly the work we do at OMG and in our IIC, CISQ and Cloud Standards Customer Council™ programs is deeply relevant to a changing economy (and therefore a changing society). These Councils focus on issues to prepare position statements collaboratively with many experts, providing input for DAVOS and other WEF events and briefings. At this year's event in January, we were proud to have presented two IIC testbed programs (chosen by IIC member WEF of course) as examples of the future digital economy.

The Councils meet all year long by teleconference, and once a year all of the Councils meet together in Dubai at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils (that's a mouthful!) hosted by the ruler of Dubai himself. This year, I participated not only in the Council to which I was assigned, but also in a cross-Council working group on Investment in Infrastructure. Although I won't be at DAVOS myself, I do think the assembled leaders there will get a strong taste of the future positive (and negative) disruptions facing many industries.

(l) Dr. Soley participates in WEF Global Future Councils.

After the WEF event, I was privileged to spend a day in nearby Abu Dhabi for the important Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference (ADIPEC) to meet with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). Classic Internet of Things has found its way into ADNOC with its Panorama project, pulling together information from across the company's infrastructure into one place where it can be efficiently optimized and predictively maintained.

At the urging of several members of CABASE (a new member of the IIC), I added one more stop, to CABASE's headquarters. Tucked away inside this beautiful century-old building is the center of Argentina's star-shaped Internet; some 60% of all Internet traffic in Argentina runs through these walls. High ceilings and lovely old stained glass windows belie the high technology ― and good old-fashioned mess of wires -- within. There we had a lively discussion of possible testbeds that CABASE and other Argentinian companies are very interested to build, especially in support of the oil and gas industry, an important one in Argentina. It's simply amazing how much interest there suddenly is in the oil and gas industry in Industrial Internet and digitalization technology!

Sunrise over the Estacion Retiro and Torre Monumental in downtown Buenos Aires

Next on my itinerary is Burlingame, California where OMG and IIC have both scheduled their member meetings from Dec. 4-8. During the week, OMG has also organized Special Events in security, retail, data residency, business process modeling and smart manufacturing that anyone can attend. On Friday, December 8^th, IIC has organized its World Tour event in San Francisco, which is also open to the public. There will be executive keynote presentations, panels on testbeds, security and standards & architecture, testbed demonstrations and networking opportunities. If you are in the area, please stop by.

I’ll be back in the Boston area this Thursday which is the annual Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. During this day, friends and family come together around the dinner table to commemorate an autumn harvest feast held by the Pilgrims from Massachusetts Bay Colony with local Native American tribes. Today, it includes watching football games ― from high school to college and the NFL ― and parades around the country. Happy Thanksgiving!

Richard Soley's On the Road Blog

As my eight weeks of frenetic travel closes out September and October (see my last blog too ― this trip was Boston to Singapore to Astana to Washington to New Orleans to Boston to Barcelona to Aix-en-Provence to London to Santiago to Singapore to Boston), I feel like crisscrossing the planet for a few weeks at a time can get tiring. While I never woke up wondering where I was, I will admit that I had to think through where I was going next!

After the huge success of IoT Solutions World Congress and my stops in beautiful Aix-en-Provence and busy London, I was off to Santiago, Chile, for meetings with prospective members of the Object Management Group® and the Industrial Internet Consortium® (IIC™) to discuss participation in new major events in South America and to speak at a sell-out crowd at ESE Business School (part of the Universidad de los Andes). And I do mean sell-out ― the room fit the normal 350 people for its business-oriented events, but apparently two more rooms were needed to show the day's talks on video for a total of over one thousand attendees! The topic was "Directivos Amenazados: Cuando las Tecnologías Lideran Mejor que las Personas," or roughly, "Management Under Threat: When Technology Leads Ahead of People"― in other words, which technology disruptions are going to have major impacts on company management over the next few years. The two featured speakers were myself and local radio and television personality Sergio Melnick; I talked of course about the introduction of the Industrial Internet and changing standards in the corporate world, while Sergio did a rollicking, humorous but important overview of how many technologies around the corner have changed and will change company structures.

(back row l-r): Juan Claro, Salvador Said, Sergio Melnick, Gonzalo Parot and Jose Antonio Garcés Cotelo; (front row l-r): Dr. Richard Soley, Rafael Mies, Jose Antonio Garcés Silva and Raimundo Monge at the ESE Business School

Speaking in front of sell-out audience at the ESE Business School

Both talks were well received by a mix of students and current company management from some of the largest companies in South America. It was certainly wonderful to speak in such a lovely setting; not only is the Universidad de Los Andes a beautiful campus, but the setting in the foothills of the Andes, with a fantastic view down to the city of Santiago, is simply spectacular. The Universidad de Los Andes is a non-profit private research university founded in 1989 in Santiago, Chile, that places special emphasis on research, innovation and development.

While in Chile, I also had the chance to meet the event producers of Meet&Greet who plan a new major IoT event for Latin America in April of 2018, very much patterned on the successful IoT Solutions World Congress model in Barcelona.  I have, in fact, worked with the company indirectly before (there's even a picture of me at one of their quite successful events in Santiago on their web site!) and we look forward to a fruitful relationship in the future.

Meet and Greet event producers (l-r), Daniel Amigo, Guillermo Guzmán, standing with Dr. Richard Soley

I also had several private meetings with startup companies in the Santiago area, interested in the full suite of OMG brands: OMG standards, IIC testbeds, Consortium for IT Software Quality™ metrics and Cloud Standards Customer Council™ white papers. The startup scene is bubbling in Chile today with companies dedicated to new retail models; focused on the construction materials trade; finding ways to optimize airline revenue; and very novel ways to explore for minerals and oil & gas without the usual field explosions that have been used for decades. I expect lots of good news from the Andes over the next few years.

My last stop on this World Tour was Singapore (where the tour started in early September!) to speak at two conferences (in wildly different vertical markets, reminding me of the widespread disruption we can expect from the application of the Internet of Things to industrial systems) and several companies considering what OMG is doing around the world. One of the most interesting was STTelemedia, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek which invests in telecommunications systems worldwide. Another was IIC member Tata Communications, which routes around a quarter of the Internet's traffic around the world (in 200 countries). Singapore is certainly a hotbed of communications technology.

Interest in all OMG programs was high at Asian Downstream Summit 2017, a part of the Singapore International Energy Week, which took up most of a huge conference center in the Marina Bay area of Singapore.  I've noticed tremendous and growing interest from the oil & gas sector in standards and testbeds over the last few months, at events in Houston, Singapore, Buenos Aires and elsewhere.  Expect to see some interesting action in that space over the coming year.

Taking the stage to talk about #IIoT testbeds at Asian Downstream Summit

I also had the opportunity to keynote a small gathering of manufacturing-focused companies at the Monetising the IoT event, part of Manufacturing Solutions Expo 2017. Manufacturing and production continue to be a major focus for Industrial Internet ― not the only focus of course, but some one third of IIC testbeds for example. That was definitely evident in this group as well.

As I arrive back in the United States for a busy week (and then a trip to Europe and South America again), I look back on a very productive two months!

My worldwide trip continued last month (while staying within this solar system!). It's exciting to see the growing interest in semantic standards in the way that the Object Management Group® (OMG®) thinks about standardization, and the growing realization that testbeds are the best way to understand the requirements, best practices and possible limitations of new technologies.

We started with a teleconference with the Michigan Healthcare Information Network (MiHIN) which is struggling to understand how standards (especially from the OMG and HL7) can best be used to integrate healthcare information in the state of Michigan. This teleconference will likely also point us to the needs for future interoperability standards based on semantics.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a World Economic Forum workshop at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology focused on the opportunities and challenges coming from the implementation of the Internet of Things (IoT) in industries such as healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and production, mining, and so forth. This workshop, hosted by Prof. Sanjay Sarma at MIT, surfaced fascinating issues having to do with the relationship between Industrial IoT and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. There are obvious issues like improved lifestyles from better technology, and depressed employment markets from the same move to automation. It was quite nice to be at a workshop near home, even if I was only in town for a few days on my long itinerary (Singapore, Washington, New Orleans, Boston, Barcelona, Aix-en-Provence, London, Santiago and back to Singapore).

Without a doubt the highlight of this nine-week trip has to be the IoT Solutions World Congress. This was the third edition of the best and biggest annual Industrial Internet conference in Barcelona, and while nearly doubling in attendance this year from 2016 (which itself had nearly doubled from the first edition in 2015), exhibited an even better agenda focused on real users and real user stories. As President of the Advisory Board for the show, we held the line on exactly that, and have received hundreds of comments remarking positively on the user focus. More than ever before, the show was the place to be to know what the future—and often, the present―look like in agriculture, healthcare, finance and even emergency management. The signature difference of the show was the central testbed floor abutting the Industrial Internet Consortium® booth, showing off early lessons from our testbeds (and a superb adjunct to our initial public results, http://www.iiconsortium.org/press-room/10-31-17.htm

(L) Dr. Soley signs the Industrial Internet Consortium liaison agreement with Rizzo Hahn of Associação Brasileira de Internet Industrial.

 

The Gala Awards Dinner at the Museo Nacional de Arte de Catalunya

 

IIC Time Sensitive Networks for Flexible Manufacturing testbed received the Best Testbed Award at IoT Solutions World Congress.

 

(R) Dr. Stan Schneider, CEO at IIC Member, Real-Time Innovations, co-presented "Industrial Internet Connectivity Framework (IICF), a Guide to IIoT Connectivity" with Dr. Richard Soley, Executive Director of the IIC.

 After the excitement (and lack of sleep) in Barcelona―in the middle of a difficult week politically for Catalunya―I headed off to Aix-en-Provence, alongside Marseille in southern France. There Pôle SCS arranged a successful seminar on the Industrial Internet and a number of meetings with local companies (the Aix area is rife with high-technology companies, headquartered in France and elsewhere). One visit to this beautiful region is sufficient to understand why companies like to settle there!

In a seminar very much focused on both the Industrial Internet and the impact of Internet security, more than 125 hardy souls participated in a day of presentations (kicked off by yours truly) and intelligent, piercing discussion. Why "hardy souls?" Because of a French general strike on that day, my two-weeks in Europe featured a general strike each Tuesday wherever I've been, in both Barcelona and Aix-en-Provence, is it me?).

Finally, I keynoted a conference in London at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch headquarters in The City, with a couple hundred participants from the institutional investment world trying to understand the likely impact of the Industrial Internet on equity markets worldwide. It seems clear that the disruption that comes along with the application of IoT to various industries will not confine itself to the information technology marketplace; rather we're going to see significant disruption in agriculture, transportation, production and so forth. My keynote focused on what we mean by "Industrial Internet" and how OMG standards will support that nascent market (and how our testbed program will help us learn about disruption).  Response was very powerful throughout the day.

Now on to my last two stops on this long trip, in South America and back to Southeast Asia.