special report By Ryan Gerbrandt, Trilliant Internet of Things and the myth of the killer app To prepare for the future, mission critical infrastructure must balance the need for near-term ROI and lay the groundwork for future benefits – while hedging the risk and uncertainties of an emerging marketplace. Above all, scrutinise your communications platform. T he concept of smart city and Internet of Things (IoT) is at the peak of the hype cycle. It offers tremendous promise of a future enabled by smart analytics that enhance efficiency, ease congestion, reduce waste and error and make our lives easier. Yet it faces many obstacles. Who will own the data it generates? Who can access it? What about privacy – and security? Who will pay for the infrastructure and who would truly benefit from it? that promise near-term return on investment. Second, new technologies tend to emerge then merge. Vertical applications that pay Utilities, due to their regulated nature, have hurdles to cross to establish the case for investing in technology. Smart grid, for many utilities, began as nearly synonymous with smart meters simply because metering was the first use case supporting a return on the cost of installation. Gradually, the understanding of ‘smart grid’ grew to include forms of automation across the distribution grid as utilities also found cost/benefits in applications like outage management, voltage regulation and advanced distribution management. Emerge and merge The history of smart grid offers significant parallels to the smart cities movement and the evolution toward the IoT. As IT and communications technologies transformed consumers’ lives over the past decade or so, utilities faced a range of challenges to integrate it effectively into their operations and their customer relationships. Throughout the transition, two patterns have endured. First, adoption tends to begin with use cases Smart grid innovation arose from these vertical applications, each requiring some form of communication and management. Embedded communications allowed meters to talk to each other; upgrades to substation and other T&D resources often meant equipping units to send and receive data, even if it was only the capability to be pinged. As the smart grid era matures, utility operations, many still siloed, may have multiple smart devices and technologies, each capable of communicating only with their own make and model. As the smart grid market developed, mergers and acquisitions brought some hardware and software makers under the same umbrella, consolidating the market to some degree. Yet the patchwork challenge has remained for utilities; many that had invested deliberately to secure return on their investments are now facing limitations in managing, securing, updating – or bringing together for analysis – now exponential volumes of data. The fundamental rules apply As the saying goes, the only constant is change. The choice to invest in a particular solution always carries the risk of painting oneself into a future corner. Yet, certain needs endure – whether in smart grid or the smart cities and IoT era. Security, scalability and the need for a flexible way of connecting devices remain vital. A worker installs Trilliant’s SecureMesh NAN Repeater in Mexico City as part of smart energy communications project for CFE 26 Utilities, many of which now have years of experience with machine-to-machine (M2M) networks in the form of advanced INTERNET OF THINGS