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A comment on GE discovers that industrial IoT doesn't scale.

Re:GE discovers that industrial IoT doesn't scale by grok2 on Saturday September 02, 2017 @11:29AM (#15156437)
It's not clear from the article what doesn't scale -- is it that businesses stretch themselves too thin or is it that making a platform that encompasses any and every use case is not a viable business model or is it that the software technology itself doesn't scale? Anyone know?
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Re:GE discovers that industrial IoT doesn't scale by csours on Saturday September 02, 2017 @11:30AM (#15156451)
> making a platform that encompasses any and every use case is not a viable business model

That one.

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Re:GE discovers that industrial IoT doesn't scale by elihu on Saturday September 02, 2017 @02:28PM (#15157451)
It sounds like it's trying to say that creating a walled-garden IIoT ecosystem doesn't work, and that IIoT products are so specialized and application specific that success in one part of the market doesn't usually translate into success in different areas of the IIoT market.
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Re:GE discovers that industrial IoT doesn't scale by Joeri on Saturday September 02, 2017 @02:51PM (#15157579)
The whole point of equipping existing installations with IoT sensors is to do data science that lets you improve on some important metric, but for that you need to have deep domain insight as well as the technical insight to wrangle the data. So the customer knows the domain but lacks the technical resources, and the vendor often doesn't understand the domain. That's why you need to do vertical solutions in this market.

(I work on a vertical solution for IoT-driven data science in the facility management sector.)

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Re:GE discovers that industrial IoT doesn't scale by CharlesW on Saturday September 02, 2017 @12:09PM (#15156689)
> It's not clear from the article what doesn't scale…

This is the main problem with the article IMO.

Many IIoT technologies and platforms will be used across vastly different industries. Others will be industry-specific. As they always have, industry-specific vendors will integrate industry-specific elements with more "scalable" elements to provide complete solutions for specific customers.

OTOH, every complete IIoT solution will be bespoke. Sales, marketing, and integration will not be scalable.

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Re:GE discovers that industrial IoT doesn't scale by ethbro on Saturday September 02, 2017 @12:26PM (#15156809)
> OTOH, every complete IIoT solution will be bespoke. Sales, marketing, and integration will not be scalable.

This is what Palantir learned, and what Oracle semi-avoided in their positioning:

Your scalable solution is worthless without last-mile integration, and that integration is always bespoke.

Is the IIoT pushing for interface standards, a la SQL?

That would seem the main way to scale and extract the kind of revenue they're looking for. Create a standard (and therefore market) for smaller fish to perform the integration, such that it lifts the data up a level and products can be built that operate against diverse sources.

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Re:GE discovers that industrial IoT doesn't scale by warrenm on Saturday September 09, 2017 @01:34PM (#15208101)
>Your scalable solution is worthless without last-mile integration, and that integration is always bespoke.

Yep. And always has been.

Spreadsheets are a great metaphor for this ... or an artist's canvas. They're both capable of amazing things being done on/in them ... but only with the application of custom effort.

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Re:GE discovers that industrial IoT doesn't scale by jessaustin on Saturday September 02, 2017 @05:26PM (#15158296)
ISTM that you can't make much money by doing the easy part, unless you do a shitload of volume, at which point you're competing with AWS. Good luck!
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