Microsoft, Hitachi Announce IIoT Connectivity Collaboration

Microsoft, Advantech, Behr Technologies (BTI), and Hitachi announced a new collaborative effort to research and develop wireless communications solutions for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) networks.

The collaborative team aims to deliver the first mass-market, massively scalable, end-to-end wireless gateway solution for industrial and commercial applications. It wants to improve building penetration, integrate with legacy systems, and provide extremely long battery life for nodes.

See also: IIC Lists IIoT Benefits and Best Practices in New Edge Computing Whitepaper

The solution will utilize Advantech gateways to transmit 1.5 million messages per day, using BTI’s low-power, wide-area network, the first to use the ETSI standard. Hitachi’s IoT Service Hub will provide businesses with real-time analytics, improving efficiencies.

“With Azure services and BTI MIOTY, customers can implement cost-effective and highly scalable solutions to facilitate the “last mile” of communication for messages delivered from sensors to the Cloud,” said Rashmi Misra, general manager of IoT Solutions at Microsoft.

“Working with our broad partner ecosystem, we are ushering in a new era of IoT communication that will enable organizations around the world to realize the promise of industrial automation in ways that were not previously possible.”

The first application designed by the collaboration is a workforce safety solution, which reads an employee’s heart-rate though a wearable, checks health information, and can warn a manager if they are in danger. This could be deployed for miners, who work in expansive and hectic environments.

“The BTI MIOTY contribution to the overall, end-to-end ecosystem with Microsoft, Hitachi Solutions, and Advantech gives customers an out-of-the-box IIoT solution that provides critical machine data and telemetry in areas they cannot currently access,” said Albert Behr, CEO of Behr Technologies Inc.

“BTI MIOTY has been specifically developed for massive and lowest-cost LPWAN communications and is poised to be the commercial standard for wireless IIoT connectivity. The use cases are endless and it will deliver a wireless IIoT solution that is unparalleled in the market.”