Sensor Integration and Onboarding Processes

Wolfgang Möller, our Global Director Discrete Industries and Internet of Things, had the chance to talk to three international IoT Architects from itelligence. The topic was how to match different IoT ecosystems in organizations. The full round table discussion is splitted up into four interesting video snippets covered in the following blog series.

Welcome to part two of our blog series “Matching Different IoT Ecosystems”. Part one was about the challenges and opportunities of vertical and horizontal integration of business processes and the need for high-performance IoT scenarios. Today’s issue will handle the next step: Sensor Integration and Onboarding Processes. What is next in line when your different ecosystems are matched? How will you onboard and integrate your physical things into your network, e.g., machines, wearables, or devices? I had a discussion with some of my international colleagues about the challenges and trends of sensor integration and onboarding processes.

Integrating Sensors Is Easy

With a view to the discrete manufacturing industries where we are integrating most of the sensors at the moment, we need about six days to set up a proof of concept (PoC) and four hours to integrate data locally. This is an enormous step forward compared to the situation a few years ago, where the amount of manual work was much higher. But looking ahead, I am convinced that the technology of today opens up ways that allow a plug-and-play approach.

Plug-and-Play Is the Future Approach of Onboarding

In a business world where “Time is money” is not just a phrase, the main challenge is to onboard sensors and physical things as fast as possible. Imagine a scenario where you are attaching new things to your IoT ecosystem by pushing the “Connect” button. What seems to be intuitively easy is not the standard today. But it should be! With a closer look into the SAP universe we can see that they are working hard on this issue. This year they presented the new SAP Leonardo portfolio.

One layer of this portfolio is the SAP Leonardo Foundation which is divided into technical and business services. This is where the Thing Modeler is located. This tool simplifies onboarding processes and makes it easy to create a digital twin out of physical things (devices, machines, and wearables).

Customers Have a Rough Understanding of What They Would Like to Achieve

What’s the situation in most businesses? We at itelligence experience that most customers have a rough understanding of what they would like to achieve. They are aiming to give their ideas wings now, and they need a technical solution.

Wolfgang Möller 

Global Director Discrete Industries & Internet of Things

itelligence AG