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Remote maintenance essential to IoT, says Innodisk

Chloe Liao, Taipei; Adam Hwang, DIGITIMES Asia

As the volume of IoT devices and sensors is increasing explosively and when they break down, manual repair is costly and requires lengthy operation suspension, remote monitoring and maintenance become important to secure their steady operation, according to industrial memory module maker Innodisk.

Equipment maintenance and operation costs take up 6.4% of a firm's revenue on global average, and it spends a sum amounting to 80% of the original purchase cost to keep the equipment running, mostly incurring from losses due to suspended equipment, Innodisk cited Gartner as indicating.

According to market forecast, there will be 75 billion IoT devices or sensors installed around the world in 2025, Innodisk noted. The average ratio of the number of maintenance staff members to the number of IoT edge devices or sensors will increase from 1:20 at present to 1:1,000, Innodisk indicated.

Innodisk in August 2019 launched its InnoAGE, an SSD solution built with Microsoft Azure Sphere to enable smart data analysis and updates, data security and cloud computing-based remote control, the company indicated. The solution features out of band management which supports remote management via separated communication lines. Taiwan-based industrial computing device makers DFI, Avalue Technology and IEI Integration have adopted InnoAGE.

According to IEI, about 80% of equipment breakdowns are problems that can be solved via remote remedy and about 20% are due to hardware problems that need manual repair.