With its strong base in hardware platforms, Advantech has recently actively promoted the co-creation model to work with Solution Ready Package (SRP) software partners and system integrators to build a complete industrial IoT (IIoT) supply chain and accelerate the realization of related applications.For Advantech, Japan is a strategic market for IoT business, presenting considerable opportunities in both industrial and IoT markets as a result of the country's strong demand and advanced industries. As a result, Advantech announced in March this year that the company will invest around NT$300 million (US$9.8 million) in Nippon RAD, a Japanese system integrator, in order to acquire a 19% stake of the company. Through closer cooperation, the two companies plan on jointly expanding the Japanese IIoT market.Expanding the Market with a Unique Domain-Focused System Integrator ModelAccording to Tsuyomu Tsuchiyama, director of Strategic Planning at Nippon RAD, the company was founded in 1971 and has been listed for 19 years. As a long-established IT system integrator, Nippon RAD has accumulated rich experience in IT hardware/software integration and enterprise software development.Nippon RAD is an independent system integrator, which is in contrast to many Japanese system integrators that are affiliated with large groups such as NTT, Toyota, and Software Bank. The company has 300 employees, 80 of whom are engineers. Although it is a medium-sized system integrator, it is well positioned to meet the needs of customers with its sufficient resources and work flexibility. With the emergence of the Japan's IoT market, Nippon RAD recently established a new department to develop IoT platforms and expand into new markets, particularly the smart manufacturing sector.Nippon RAD has been working with Advantech only since the middle of last year, but within this short period, the two companies have cooperated closely and have won several important IoT projects. This has been attributed to their shared vision and complementary technologies. Because of the significant synergy and positive market response, a joint venture was therefore established to make their relationship even closer."Advantech already has a strong business foundation in Japan, providing excellent hardware platforms for many manufacturing customers," Tsuchiyama said. "However, to truly help customers migrate to smart manufacturing, Advantech needs to fill the gap of software, system consulting, and integration, and this is what we specialize in. So, the cooperation between us is the best fit to explore the market together."He stressed that although the manufacturing market in Japan is mature and advanced, many traditional manufacturers still have a very conservative mindset. It is imperative that manufacturers implement new technologies and new ideas to enhance their operational efficiency and competitiveness. IoT is crucial for them to embrace for the new digitalization era.At present, Japan has no professional IoT system integrator. Nippon RAD hopes to become the country's leading domain-focused IoT integrator through its cooperation with Advantech, in a bid to drive changes in Japan's manufacturing industry. In addition, the company will gradually port its existing business intelligence and artificial intelligence analysis software to Advantech's platform. Nippon RAD has expressed great confidence in the long-term prospects of its cooperation with Advantech and the business opportunities that can be leveraged as a result of this partnership.Adhere to Strategy, Create the Highest ValueKC Liu, chairman of Advantech, pointed out that, in the future IIoT market, the ratio of production value of industrial computers, SRPs, and domain-focused system integrators will be 20:30:50. Domain-focused system integrators present the highest value and play a key role in the overall industrial chain. By acquiring a stake of Nippon RAD, Advantech will fully support them to become the iconic smart factory system integrator in Japan.Through this move, Advantech will cooperate with Nippon RAD in jointly marketing WISE-PaaS and SRP technologies in Japan. Meanwhile, Nippon RAD will become the country's WISE-PaaS Competence Center and will adopt Advantech's IIoT, WISE-PaaS, and SRP products to fulfill projects and meet market demand in Japan, especially in smart factory and Industry 4.0 application markets.Advantech plans to establish more than 50 regional domain-focused system integrator partners within the next five years. For Japan, Nippon RAD will be its sole system integrator partner but will replicate this joint venture model to other countries.Liu emphasized that Advantech's hardware platforms are now widely used. However, combining domain-focused software, services, and system integration is the only way to create value and enhance competitiveness to capitalize on the opportunities that IoT presents. In the future, those who only provide contract manufacturing services for industrial computers will fall to the bottom of the value chain, and the biggest winners will be those who have the ability to provide hardware, solutions, system integration, and cloud services to support customers around the world with a replicable platform. Although it's a challenging mission, to create the highest value, Advantech will adhere to this strategy and implement it thoroughly.Liu expects that with the implementation of the co-creation model, Advantech will be able to generate approximately 500 million USD in additional revenues in the five years, which is about one-third of current annual revenues. The IIoT market is expected to peak in the next five to ten years, gradually maturing in 15 years.

The rapid development of AI has brought a new revolution to IoT. Applying deep learning or AI algorithms to IoT system architecture to make IoT device smart has become the latest technology trend. In response to the development of AIoT, Allan Yang, Advantech's chief technology officer, stated that the company has reinterpreted the Solution Ready Package (SRP) application framework."Based on the WISE-PaaS industrial IoT Cloud Platform," Yang stated, "we have launched a diverse range of industrial IoT applications and solutions that integrate software and hardware and can be quickly replicated."Advantech SRP Evolves from Function-Oriented toward Data-DrivenThe SRPs mentioned by Yang are an indication of the industrial IoT solutions that have been developed for vertical industries. These SRPs meet 70%-80% of application needs, with the remaining gap filled by system integrators for final installation, adjustment, and customization. Currently, Advantech is targeting Industry 4.0 applications including machine-to-intelligence (M2I), intelligent retail, intelligent healthcare, , all of which fall under the development of smart cities.Advantech proposed the SRP concept as a new operating model in 2013. At that time, the traditional client­-server architecture was still maintained despite industrial applications and cloud services being a point of emphasis. With the SRP concept, the server was simply moved to the cloud and solutions with specific functions were designed to meet specific customer needs. This function-oriented architecture created a deep connection between IoT data and system functions but rendered system development difficult. This was because for every new application scenario, Advantech had to redesign and develop suitable solutions, making it difficult to realize mass replication and rapid implementation.With the current shifts in industrial trends and the coming of the data-driven era, Advantech's SRP model presents a brand new concept and framework. To meet demand for data collection and market analysis capability, the architecture of the second generation of SRPs has evolved from a function-oriented approach to a data-driven one. All IoT data are centralized on the cloud platform, providing a basis to develop applications such as AI analysis and data visualization.Yang explained that the main purpose of the existing SRP is to provide users with data and to collect related solutions. The overall framework comprises sensing devices and gateways at the edge, a cloud platform, and AI analysis with data visualization functionality. Completing this framework is the company's extensive industry expertise. Now at the foundation of Advantech's second generation of SRPs is the WISE-PaaS platform, and this has proven to be key to the flexible and rapid deployment of SRPs.WISE-PaaS-Based Solutions Enable Cross-Platform Utilization of Manufacturer DataWISE-PaaS is a cloud service software platform jointly proposed by Advantech and the Taiwan Institute for Information Industry (III). It provides multiple database services, IoT hubs, computing resource management services, multitenancy management services, flexible expansion, AI model training and framework deployment services, dashboard visualization, and multi-level data security/management services. The biggest difference between Advantech SRP and general PaaS platforms is that data migration and industrial environments are considered.Data is arguably the most valuable asset in modern times, and it is inevitably subject to government regulations or the policy requirements of individual enterprises. For example, data typically cannot be taken from a work site, which limits options for data storage. However, the cross-cloud setting feature of the WISE-PaaS platform frees IoT applications from this limitation by allowing them to be launched on any private or public cloud. As such, relevant applications can be launched via the WISE-PaaS platform regardless of whether Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Alibaba Cloud, or some other cloud platform is used.Another common occurrence - particularly at industrial sites - is the deployment of devices of different brands and types, each of which may support a proprietary communication protocol. The implication of this is that various communication standards must be consolidated before data can be collected. Because of Advantech's decades of experience in developing industrial applications that support for a variety of industrial protocols, the connectivity between WISE-PaaS platform and edge devices is outstanding in meeting the needs of a wide range of industrial applications.According to Yang, it is difficult to carry out cross-industry applications with a function-based approach to development. However, by adopting the WISE-PaaS platform, the underlying data acquisition architecture can be flexibly adjusted and built to meet specific application needs to achieve the goal of mass replication and rapid import and to drive the development of future IoT applications.Creating IoT Growth Opportunities with Partners through the Co-Creation ModelIn the past two years, Advantech has actively invited many cloud service solution providers from different industries to migrate their solutions to the WISE-PaaS platform or to redevelop their specialized industrial applications on the platform. At the recent WISE-PaaS Worldwide Partner Engagement Meeting, Advantech published nine sets of co-created SRP solutions. At the IoT Co-Creation Summit, which will be held on November 1 and 2 in Suzhou, China, Advantech will announce 30 co-created IoT solutions (AIoT.SRPs), with 50 partners showcasing the most cutting-edge applications in key domains.Yang emphasized that during the first phase of IoT development, Advantech focused on hardware and conducted product-oriented mergers and acquisitions. In the second phase, the WISE-PaaS platform and SRP industrial application solutions will be the central focus, the objective of which is to accelerate the implementation of IoT applications. As for the third phase, the strategy will be to collaborate with new software partners and domain-focused system integrators to implement industrial cloud services through the co-creation model. Ultimately, this will establish an industrial IoT supply chain in Taiwan, and this is expected to become a major driver of economic growth, similar to the country's electronics industry.

Taiwan-based semiconductor foundry house United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) and Avalanche Technology, a developer of the next generation STT-MRAM (spin transfer torque magnetic RAM), have announced that they have entered a partnership for joint development and production of MRAM to replace embedded flash.They said UMC will also make this technology available to other companies through licensing with Avalanche.Under the terms of the agreement, UMC will provide embedded non-volatile MRAM blocks based on UMC's 28nm CMOS manufacturing process. This will enable customers to integrate low latency, very high performance and low power embedded MRAM memory blocks into MCUs and SoCs, targeting the Internet of Things (IoT), wearable, consumer, industrial and automotive electronics markets.The two companies are also considering expanding the cooperation beyond 28nm, as Avalanche's CMOS compatibility and scalability to advanced process nodes enables integration of unified memory (non-volatile as well as SRAM) blocks into next generation highly integrated MCUs and SoCs, the companies said. This allows system designers to maintain the same architecture and software ecosystem without a redesign."We're excited to team with a world leader in semiconductor manufacturing such as UMC to bring this outstanding technology to market," said Petro Estakhri, CEO and co-founder of Avalanche."UMC is continuously introducing enhanced process offerings to bring added competitive benefits to our customers," said G C Hung, vice president of Advanced Technology Development at UMC. "With embedded NVM becoming more prevalent in today's IC designs, we have developed a strong portfolio of robust eNVM process solutions for high growth sectors such as emerging consumer and automotive applications. We are happy to cooperate with Avalanche Technology for 28nm MRAM, and we look forward to ramping this process to production for UMC customers."

Leading semiconductor test equipment supplier Advantest Corporation will display its new testing capabilities for PCIe Gen4 solid-state drives (SSDs) using its MPT3000 testers and present two technical papers at the Flash Memory Summit on August 7-9 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California. Advantest is a gold sponsor of this year's summit.Exhibition BoothIn booth #606, Advantest will exhibit the industry's first single-system test solution for developing and manufacturing PCIe Gen4 SSDs on its MPT3000 platform. This fully integrated system helps users to accelerate the market introduction of next-generation SSDs by leveraging the proven tester architecture and software from Advantest's PCIe Gen 3 test solution while also eliminating the need to wait for third-party Gen4 applications to become widely available. The result is the industry's fastest and lowest risk path to market.Paper PresentationsAdvantest technical experts will present two technical papers during the summit.In session 201-1 on "Testing/Performance Analysis" beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, August 8, Linden Hsu will give a presentation on "Diagnosing SSD Failures During Testing," which will examine methods for identifying the causes of device failures by collecting, sorting and analyzing information from both the DUT and the test equipment.Then in session 301A-1 on "Testing Issues" beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, August 9, Sneha Nadig will address "Testing Dual-Port NVMe SSDs," which will cover devices whose multiple signal paths and ability to connect to two hosts simultaneously are highly valued in the enterprise storage market.

Leading semiconductor test equipment supplier Advantest Corporation has introduced the industry's first fully integrated test solution for developing, debugging and mass producing PCIe Gen4 solid-state drives (SSD) on the proven MPT3000 platform, the same tester used by leading manufacturers of PCIe Gen3, SATA and SAS SSDs. The new, all-inclusive test solution enables SSD manufacturers to accelerate their newest products' time to market.The MPT3000 platform can now cover all test insertions for PCIe Gen 4 devices - from engineering with the MPT3000ES to reliability demonstration testing (RDT) with the MPT3000ENV to production testing with the MPT3000HVM - without waiting for third-party PCIe Gen 4 SSD applications to be commercially available. It streamlines the transition to the next generation of devices by offering users a test flow that spans design to manufacturing and uses the same tester architecture and software as Advantest's proven PCIe Gen 3 solution. This holistic solution gives SSD manufacturers the fastest, lowest risk path to market."To address the wide variety of SSD protocols and form factors, we offer our modular MPT3000 platform, which we have now enhanced to validate and test the newest generation of PCIe memories," said Colin Ritchie, vice president of system-level test at Advantest. "This highly flexible system's tester-per-DUT architecture and hardware-acceleration make it a single-system solution for virtually all engineering, volume production and BIST (built-in self-test) applications."MPT3000 PCIe Gen 4 products are now available and shipments to customers have begun.

Dell EMC has announced its Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA), the Dell EMC IDPA DP4400, providing simple and powerful converged data protection to help mid-size organizations transform IT while combatting data sprawl and complexity.Comprehensive data protection has been a challenge for mid-size organizations. Enterprise-class products come with higher cost and complexity, while lower cost products that have traditionally targeted these organizations sacrifice performance, efficiency and application support. Dell EMC built the IDPA DP4400 from the ground up as a simple, yet powerful, solution for mid-size organizations -featuring enterprise-class capabilities for backup, deduplication, replication and recovery. IDPA DP4400 also offers built-in cloud readiness features with disaster recovery and long-term data retention to the cloud."For years, mid-size organizations haven't quite had a comprehensive data protection solution that was sized and priced right for them," said Beth Phalen, President, Data Protection, Dell EMC. "With the IDPA DP4400 there are no compromises. We're delivering a converged data protection solution that's as simple to use as it is powerful - with support for the largest application ecosystem and expansion to the cloud. The IDPA DP4400 offers the right level of modern features and capabilities for mid-size data centers at the lowest cost to protect."Simple and Powerful, at the Lowest Cost to ProtectThe IDPA DP4400 blends simplicity and performance for mid-size organizations and remote office-branch office (ROBO) environments. The solution is designed to provide organizations the lowest cost to protect and is guaranteed under the Dell EMC Future-Proof Loyalty program.The IDPA DP4400 is a converged data protection appliance in a dense 2U platform powered by Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers. Key features include:*Customer-installable and easy-to-use HTML5 user interface: Makes IDPA DP4400 ideal for deployment and management in mid-sized organizations and ROBO locations.*Grows in place with no downtime: A single 24TB appliance can grow in place to 96TB with a license key and no additional hardware to purchase.*Protect more data with 55:1 average deduplication: IDPA DP4400 can protect approximately 5PB of usable data capacity. And, with native Cloud Tier for long-term retention, the total protected usable capacity increases to 14.4 PB.*Supports largest application ecosystem: Includes support for modern applications such as MySQL and MongoDB, both physical and virtual, and support for multiple hypervisors (VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V).*Delivers powerful performance with NVMe flash: Shortens backup windows by up to 2x; backs up only de-duplicated data requiring up to 98% less bandwidth; and supports 7x more backup streams while delivering instant access and restore of virtual machines to help meet stringent SLAs and RPOs.*Cloud-ready solution: IDPA DP4400 comes with 5TB licenses each for Cloud Disaster Recovery and Cloud Tier as well as a Dell EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines starter pack that provides five VMs and a one-year subscription.The IDPA DP4400 simplifies data protection management via a modern HTML 5 user interface that automates daily tasks including management, monitoring and reporting. In addition, integration with VMware native tools, SQL Server Management Studio and Oracle RMAN enables application administrators to leverage protection features within familiar user interfaces.With an average 55:1 deduplication rate, The IDPA DP4400 also offers efficient and cost-effective native Cloud Disaster Recovery (to Amazon AWS) with end-to-end orchestration - failover in three clicks, and failback in two clicks - all without the need for additional hardware.The IDPA DP4400 is optimized for VMware environments, with leading integration that enables vAdmins to perform most common backup and recovery tasks directly from the native vSphere UI. Protecting up to 5x more VMs in a single 2U appliance and with automation across the entire VMware data protection stack (VM deployment, deployment of proxies and movement of data to protection storage), the IDPA DP4400 makes it easy and cost-effective to scale up to protect more VMs. It also provides faster VMware backups and recoveries, and more efficient networking and capacity with its leading deduplication and bandwidth utilization.The IDPA DP4400 offers customers excellent value and TCO - costing up to 80% less to protect. With up to 2x faster backup windows, up to 20% more capacity in a 2U appliance, and an average rate of 55:1 deduplication - it offers the lowest cost to protect among competing products in its class.

To capitalize on emerging business opportunities in Industry 4.0, Advantech is actively promoting the co-creation" model. This approach is aimed at forming an industrial IoT (IIoT) chain by working with domain experts in different sectors to build comprehensive field solutions. In Europe, Alleantia, a provider of connected industrial equipment solutions from Italy, has officially become a Solution Ready Package (SRP) co-creation partner. The two companies plan to cooperate to expand into the European market in a move that strengthens the strategic deployment of Advantech beyond Greater China.Alleantia is a software company based in Pisa. Since its establishment in 2011, it has focused on Industry 4.0 markets. According to Stefano Linari, the company's founder and CEO, Alleantia's goal is to connect existing high-value industrial equipment, including machine tools, metal forming machines, and packaging machinery, in a simple, plug-and-play approach with the company's device drivers. This enables the equipment to transmit collected data to enterprise applications or cloud services for further application.Simplifying Industrial Equipment ConnectivityWhen people buy common consumer electronics, such as printers, drivers are readily available to connect the printer to the PC. Linari explained that this is often not the case with industrial equipment, most of which is traditionally a closed system that adopts a proprietary protocol. Therefore, the aim of establishing Alleantia was to develop driver software for various types of industrial equipment, making it easier to connect to networks.Currently, Alleantia has developed more than 5,000 software drivers. The company has also built an online library for device vendors to publish their drivers on the Alleantia website whenever they develop new machines, thus giving their customers free access to their drivers.Alleantia has now been working with Advantech for two years. According to Linari, great achievements have been made in Italy using Alleantia's easy-to-connect software technology and Advantech's hardware gateways. Customers need only install the driver software in Advantech's gateway to connect their equipment and then link to any enterprise application or cloud service, such as Advantech's WISE-PaaS Cloud, to help companies build a complete IoT chain from the edge to the cloud.The convergence of operation technology (OT) and information technology (IT) is key to the success of smart manufacturing. Linari emphasized that Alleantia is in the middle to play the role in the bridging of both sides. By running Alleantia drivers on Advantech's gateways, OT can be more easily connected to IT, and with Allentia's encryption, data security can be ensured."We have developed drivers for many legacy devices that communicate with machine controllers via encrypted data," Linari stated. "When customers collect machine data, they cannot directly access the core controller of the device. For equipment vendors, with this approach, they not only have no losses but are also able to make their machines connected more easily to meet the requirements of Industry 4.0. As a result, many equipment vendors are willing to cooperate with us." Leveraging the Co-Creation Model to Build Synergy Linari pointed out that IIoT cannot be realized by a single company, and Alleantia is only a small part in the IoT value chain. By becoming a co-creation partner of Advantech, Alleantia is contributing to constructing a complete value chain in order to provide true end-to-end solutions, in a bid to co-create new business opportunities.With the complement of the two companies' technology strengths, Advantech and Alleantia have won the recognition of many customers over the past two years. Among them, MEP, an Italian tool machine maker, has adopted solutions from both companies to transform its existing hardware-based business model into a new service model that provides such services as data analysis for predictive maintenance and operation monitoring. The company will be ready for IPO next month."This is an important success story for our cooperation," Linari described. "It is a kind of disruptive innovation for the tool machine industry, and the end-to-end solution we provide is an important factor in accelerating the realization of its goals. In addition, through working with Advantech, we will be able to expand our business from Italy to the rest of Europe and even the world with our extensive sales channels."Arturo Lotito, head of Technical Services and Project Management at Advantech's E-IoT Europe, also said that Advantech will leverage Alleantia's domain knowledge to reach customers in industrial equipment and machine tool sectors that Advantech could not penetrate in the past, and the company can meet their requirements with more professional and effective solutions.More importantly, by providing end-to-end solutions, Advantech can reach a higher level of customers, from IT departments to the CEO level, helping them develop a comprehensive Industry 4.0 transformation project. This is experience that Advantech has previously lacked, but it fully demonstrates a significant enhancement of the value that Advantech can bring.According to Advantech's plan, to accelerate the widespread usage of IIoT applications, 20 SRP co-creation partners, like Alleantia, will be added every year over the next five years. Through close cooperation with platform providers and domain experts, Advantech will drive the formation of a complete IIoT chain, in preparation for the sizeable growth opportunities expected over the five to 10 years.

Indium Corporation and MEL Systems and Services Ltd (MELSS) have formed a strategic partnership to expand accessibility to Indium Corporation soldering materials throughout India.MELSS will be selling all of Indium Corporation's soldering materials, such as low-voiding solder paste and solder preforms for bottom termination components, solder wire for hand and robotic soldering, and rework fluxes."This partnership enables us to provide enhanced service and increased attention to our customers throughout India," said Ross Berntson, Indium Corporation president and chief operating officer.Founded in 1982, MELSS has been at the forefront of offering cutting-edge technology solutions to its customers, using the company's extensive expertise and specialized knowledge in many areas of the electronics field. With headquarters in Chennai, and branches in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Coimbatore, MELSS is capable of providing complete support to the expanding customer base.Indium Corporation is a premier materials manufacturer and supplier to the global electronics, semiconductor, thin-film, and thermal management markets. Products include solders and fluxes; brazes; thermal interface materials; sputtering targets; indium, gallium, germanium, and tin metals and inorganic compounds; and NanoFoil. Founded in 1934, the company has global technical support and factories located in China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the USA.For more information about Indium Corporation, visit www.indium.com or email abrown@indium.com. You can also follow our experts, From One Engineer To Another (#FOETA), at www.facebook.com/indium or @IndiumCorp.

Clientron Corp., a world-leading provider of POS, thin client and embedded systems, has launched the PST650, a fully integrated POS terminal that features built-in choices of major brand thermal printers to optimize your business operations and enhance user experience. With streamline and flexible design, the PST650 is armed at POS applications including ordering, checkout, and self-service solutions for hospitality and retail industries.Multiple integrated thermal printer optionsWith a 15-inch bezel-free display, the PST650 offers 7H scratch-resistance and IP64 water & dust-proof front panel protection. It offers free space on the stand for multiple cube type thermal printers and fits perfectly into environments where counter space saving and flexibility is demanded. With screw-less rear cover assembly design, it allows for easy access to the receipt printer, and a built-in high speed thermal printer helps users to improve work efficiency.Trusted & power-efficient embedded platformWith streamlined capability and innovation, the PST650 takes advantage of power-efficient Intel quad-core processors with speeds up to 2GHz to deliver outstanding computing, graphical and media performance in a compact form factor and a fanless architecture. It gives forward-thinking businesses options for durable, endurance, and performance.Variety Peripherals Configuration OptionsAdditionally, it comes with a wide range of easily connected modules, including iButton, magnetic card readers, 2D barcode scanner, VFD, 8-, 10.4- or 15-inch customer displays options. The easy-access 2.5-inch HDD tray design allows users to conveniently install or replace HDD for maintenance and it also allows them to easily install MSR and iButton via USB connector. The PST650 can be used in many different fields like retail, kiosk, convenience stores, fashion shops or hospitality locations.The PST650 POS terminal is a valuable and practical addition to your POS solutions. For more products information, visit the Clientron website: www.clientron.comAbout ClientronClientron was founded in 1983. The company is dedicated to providing global intelligent solutions to our clients. With design, manufacturing and service abilities, Clientron offers high-quality and high-performance computing platforms including Thin Client, POS and Intelligent Systems. We are steadfast in our commitment to develop and provide even more advanced IoT client solutions and services for our partners and customers to build an intelligent e-World. Visit us at www.clientron.com .Clientron PST650 POS terminalPhoto: Company

Amazon Web Services (AWS) made its first-ever appearance at the Computex Taipei tradeshow this year and actively took part in several special-topic forums hosted by the Computex organizer. Satyen Yadav, general manager, IoT and edge computing services, AWS, gave a systematic introduction on AWS IoT services in his speech at a Computex tech summit.Drawing on user case examples in smart home and industrial applications, he explained in his 40-minute presentation how AWS IoT services help customers overcome technical challenges encountered. The examples include how a renowned cleaning robot brand uses AWS IoT services to address the challenges in its rapid global market expansion and how a smart lock manufacturer uses AWS FreeRTOS to enhance its system's security.For industrial applications, a leading Japan-based consumer electronics manufacturer has used AWS services to ensure proper implementation of its manufacturing equipment maintenance plan for the purpose of reducing the machines' downtime and raising their production efficiency. There is also a similarly interesting user case example in smart agriculture. Yadav emphasized that AWS is well experienced in applying problem-solving skills to develop solutions that overcome challenges. AWS IoT services help with the integration of upstream and downstream businesses and combine industry-wide efforts to build up Taiwan's leading edge in the global IT supply chain.AWS IoT services have evolved into a complete system encompassing cloud, edge computing and sensor nodes. Cloud services including storage and computing services are provided through AWS IoT Core, coupled with AWS IoT Analytics focusing on data analysis with the edge computing solution performing sensing, local area network computing and real-time responses. In addition to Greengrass, end devices are also equipped with AWS FreeRTOS for information security.AWS provides wide-range and in-depth services for IoT device management and information security. By seeing a variety of user case examples demonstrating how technological challenges are overcome, Yadav hopes prospective customers can get inspired and then work with AWS engineering professionals to jointly solve problems, thereby bringing their innovations to reality. AWS IoT services allow companies to use smart devices to rapidly and easily expand operation, improve production processes or create unique business models, while supporting them with a broad range of IoT cloud services.AWS Greengrass drives widespread popularity of edge computingEdge computing services address the problem when end devices lose network connection by placing parts of the cloud computing technologies into end devices, which are closer to users. They can process the data collected over the local area network and only send critical data back to cloud to save the time and costs from network bandwidth used for back-and-forth communication. However, sending data to back-end cloud computing system for further processing and analysis are still covered by the products, making this type of devices becoming popular.AWS released Greengrass as its main edge computing service platform, which includes Greengrass software and Greengrass Core processors, AWS Greengrass allows users to create a Lambda operating environment in an end device using AWS Lambda and AWS IoT, enabling offline use and process of IoT application programs across AWS cloud and local devices.With growing computing and analytical power of end devices, more system manufacturers are bringing machine learning technologies to end devices so Greengrass also supports Amazon Machine Learning to enhance smart end devices' computing capabilities and speed. It further maintains data synchronization across devices such that they can still work in synch even when Internet connection is not available.For information security and communication considerations, Greengrass provides the capability to filter data to ensure the end device only sends necessary data to cloud. It also makes use of AWS IoT security and access control functions to authenticate users and encrypt device data, thus guaranteeing information security when the end device is connected.Yadav shared a user case in smart agriculture where a Japan-based customer that grows high-value crops in a greenhouse uses cameras to record plant growths and decides on how much fertilizer and water to use based on image analysis. Only important data such as crop output and growth projection is sent to the cloud system for analysis and management. This sets a good example for smart agriculture applications.AWS introduces Alexa for Business, making Alexa Voice Service available in the officeAlong with the overwhelming success of Amazon's Echo in the North America market, Alexa Voice Service is expanding from personal and home use to automotive, smart TV and other applications. It is also growingly being used in business settings such as calling cabs, guiding guests on factory tours, allowing guests to apply for one-time access to wireless networks and looking up information in ERP, Salesforce or Concur systems. The usage scenarios are diversified and even include using the voice assistant to reserve meeting rooms. They are very useful and valuable in the business world.According to usage survey and analysis results, AWS found that for Alexa Voice Service to be used in the office AWS has to satisfy three urgent needs - device management; product feature enhancements in case of new demand and product maintenance; and privacy protection.Alexa for Business is a service launched to respond to corporate users' needs. For example, it takes the hassle out of deployment on a massive scale. By using Alexa's setting tool, the user can install and configure a large number of smart speakers in a room with the Massive Deployment feature.Alexa Skill enables devices to provide their main services. For example, many video conference system providers make use of Alexa Skill to expand what their meeting equipment can do, such as using it to update or connect with other devices.As to privacy protection, Alexa can give an invitation to a personal device, allowing it to join a corporate meeting. For example, an employee can participate in a company online meeting by connecting his or her Echo smart speaker to the meeting system. However, the Alexa Skill and the settings of the employee's device will be hidden from the company's management system. The management system can only decide whether to allow a personal device to join or leave a meeting, so the user's privacy is not being invaded through the personal device's connection, giving users the full control of the sharing activities on their offices' smart speakers devices.AWS encourages corporations to develop Public Skill to offer unique services to their users. There are currently a wide variety of Public Skill services available, for example, ordering coffee or pizza, serving bank VIP customers as well as some surprising new usages in computer peripherals, video conferencing, ERP systems and other business sectors. Of course, companies can design their own Private Skill using the Skill development kit. Public Skill is for use by the general public so AWS has the obligation to keep a close watch.Convenient and easy AWS IoT Enterprise Button takes care of everything with one clickAWS IoT Enterprise Button is a simple and easy, battery-powered Wi-Fi or LTE-connected click-of-button device. The basic idea is to have a device that can activate services. When the user presses a button, a spectrum of ingeniously designed services will be presented in front of him or her. Developers can use it to easily integrate AWS IoT technologies and services. AWS IoT 1-Click services are therefore available on end devices, combining edge computing with cloud computing and data analysis to go from simply responding to calls to a system streamlining business operation flows.AWS thinks AWS IoT Enterprise Button can be used in a vast range of application scenarios. For example, engineers can use AWS IoT Enterprise Button to install and activate a batch of equipment at a construction site. It can also be used to update or install software in bulk with one click for pipeline control valves. It takes only one click of a button to start an operation for multiple devices.As a matter of fact, AWS IoT services not only enable new applications, new services and new markets for customers but also help build a new value system that pushes industry upgrade and transformation. The diverse solutions that AWS and its IoT ecosystem partners jointly presented at COMPUTEX 2018 gave good examples that the industry not only can learn something from but can also combine forces with AWS to create a better future.