Internet of Things (IoT) is certainly being a winning zone for those that already create good for consumers if they can successfully keep moving to become a service-oriented organization. This sounds sense than traditional technology companies trying to leverage selling personal goods for users.
Big manufacturers already have brand recognition and reputation in a good place. However, it doesn't relate that connecting person with a different set of services is an easy task. It is actually a huge challenge.
Bosch was pretty much aware of the situation and made the best out of it. Having an enormous history in selling home and kitchen appliances, Bosch has been working dedicatedly since 2008 to shift its business model from sales to selling goods that keep the customer engaged throughout a product lifecycle with Internet-enabled services. Let’s dig into how Bosch did it.
How is Bosch Doing It?
IoT is a multifaceted and diverse field and is constantly evolving. New devices, applications, and features are bound to emerge while the others will go obsolete. Based on Cloud Foundry, Bosch IoT is reported to connect more than 6 million devices and machines. Their current applications include parking space detection, insurance rebates for drivers, and connecting smartphones with heating, lighting and smoke alarms for home. Bosch has a subdivision as Bosch Software Innovations has designed, developed, and operated 250+ international IoT projects.
Automotive MEM Sensors
Bosch has been a pioneer and a world’s leading supplier of MEM sensors in the automotive and consumer electronic systems. Used in airbags, vehicle dynamic systems, and active suspension systems, Bosch has produced around 7 billion sensors for the MEM system. Approximately 4 billion sensors come to Bosch’s conveyer on a daily basis.
To handle the data from the devices and unify the processes, Bosch realized the need for a middleware layer. This actually helped Bosch to enable cross-domain and cross-vendor support covering most of the IoT devices. Also to address more such needs, the company went ahead and developed Bosch IoT Suite which we discuss further.
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Bosch IoT Suite
With a market presence of 5.1 million, around 700+ IoT experts across the globe, and 150+ IoT based projects Bosch feels that IoT will connect physical things and logical services to create coordinated cyber-physical systems. Bosch IoT Suite-Tool box in the cloud for IoT developers, as they say, claims to provide middleware capabilities needed to develop sophisticated IoT applications.
The platform has been tailor-made for the Internet of Things scenarios. The suite addresses the need of the developers and provides customized functions. It provides the foundation for service enablement both in connecting things to the internet and in terms of delivering the backing application logic for value-added services. Consumers can make the use the combination of IoT services to rapidly implement the desired solution.
The entire suite comprises of IoT Analytics, IoT based hub, Gateway Software and Bosch IoT Things. Being one innovative platform, it supports business models based on revenue sharing to minimize the business risks of consumers. In a nutshell with the IoT Suite Bosch is building an open platform for the IoT market and will leveraging open source technologies and open standards. Also, their data privacy policy is of the highest quality that helps provide users with the transparent view of how their data is being used.
And the best part the subscription to Bosch IoT Suite is ready to use. It is highly simple to integrate and new features and services can be delivered very quickly.
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The Bosch IoT Cloud
The IoT Cloud is actually the key driver in enabling Bosch IoT solutions. It comprises a large portfolio of ready to use services. The design helps you escalate IoT based projects, improve time to time market for new solutions, profit from security mechanisms, lower complexities, and costs in your IoT projects.
The Bosch cloud comprises the highly scalable cloud based on Cloud Foundry, that makes it faster and easier for IoT developers to build, test, deploy and scale their applications. The cloud infrastructure deploys Platform as a Service (PaaS) which helps IoT developers to deliver solutions.
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IoT Gateway Software
Since many machines are yet not digitized, and hence they need to be connected in order to deliver the best. The Gateway software that you can use for already installed machines as well as for new machines.
The software works well for real-time monitoring of process data such as temperature, pressure, vibration etc. Also, the platform ensures that the production is of the highest quality. The cloud offers everything from sensors to hardware and software solutions. The Gateway architecture is built on open source standards. The platform even makes your machine and process data more transparent.
Apart from all the mentioned benefits, it becomes really easy to integrate the software quickly, conveniently and completely free of programming through an integrated web interface without interfering in the automation logic.
Also Read: How Manufacturers can become Industry 4.0 and IIoT ready?
OSGi
In a diverse scenario sharing data across devices is a daunting task. OSGi is a platform that aims to precisely achieve that. The platform reduces complexity, ensure a future-proof IoT solution, a hence provide a common framework accessible to all the developers.
The platform works on a modular architecture and splits the applications into bundles that help save resources and maintain the code. Using the OSGi framework an individual code of different people can be integrated easily.
A good example of OSGi use case in smart homes is QUVICON, by Deutsche Telekom. The platform takes care of and the partners receive a software development kit, so they can produce their own applications. QUVICON also comes with parts required for remote and device management that employs Bosch IoT Remote Manager and Bosch IoT Gateway software.
Also Read: 12 Major IoT Trends: How will it Evolve?
But with all the praise done the road for even a bigger brand like Bosch wasn’t easy. It faced a lot of challenges. There were a lot of rifts between the traditional business and the IoT divisions and making a good balance between both of them was a major task. Another problem was that the companies were not doing all that they could have to fully secure their devices that were a part of the Internet of Things ecosystem.
Anyway implementing Internet of Things turned out to be a good idea for Bosch especially from the revenue perspective and Bosch certainly had an advantage focussing on it relatively early. include detection of parking spaces, insurance rebates for careful drivers, connecting smartphones with heating, lighting, and smoke alarms at home. Backed up by Eclipse IoT to address specific IoT needs, the open cloud platform enables Bosch and its partners to develop IoT solutions for energy, construction, logistics, agriculture, as well as automotive and manufacturing industries. Bosch IoT Cloud is reported to connect more than 6 million devices and machines. Current applications include detection of parking spaces, insurance rebates for careful drivers, connecting smartphones with heating
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