The IoT For Unconnected Things

Unfortunately for most manufacturers, IoT (Internet of Things) and particularly IIoT (Industrial IoT) remains a continuously advancing horizon. Fix-before-failure, predictive maintenance, smart metering, asset tracking, have all been touted as the killer-apps of IIoT for a long time.

To be fair, IoT is trending in the right direction, but is not fully there yet. Turns out that the reason is pretty simple. It’s been reported that roughly 2% of Cisco’s IoT devices “call home”. For industrial manufacturers, it’s the same story but exacerbated by the fact that they must rely on their unconnected installed base for any aftermarket growth. Equipment that was installed years and even decades ago is certainly not connected. So, how do you deploy fix-before-failure on unconnected assets?