SAP Announces New Co-Innovation Projects
SAP AG today announced two new co-innovation projects as part of its commitment to making the "Internet of Things" a real, repeatable and scalable business opportunity for enterprise customers. The company is collaborating with the University of Guelph on a research project designed to demonstrate how use of sensors for data collection increases energy efficiency benefits of green roofs while reducing maintenance and costs for building owners. SAP is also working with SK Solutions, the global leader in anti-collision software, to create an innovative system to help engineering and construction companies improve the management of collision avoidance and make critical information available in real time. The announcement was made at the Internet of Things World Forum, being held from October 29-31 in Barcelona, Spain.
For many businesses, the next wave of competitive advantage will come from the ability to derive intelligence from sensor-generated data, and to deliver resulting insights to the right hands at the right time with the right context. SAP believes companies require end-to-end "Systems of Things" comprised of machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity, cloud enablement, device management, Big Data management, complex event processing, predictive analytics and apps.
"The emerging ubiquity of intelligent devices in both consumer and industrial settings is changing the landscape of what is possible," said Steve Lucas, president, Platform Solutions, SAP AG. "Not only does it open up instant visibility to what is happening at the edges of operations, organizations can combine Big Data with predictive analytics to create real-time insight when and where it is needed. Business leaders who can harness the power of the 'Internet of Things' to transform organizational operations and create new avenues for growth and profits will lead in the marketplace. SAP is only company that has all the enterprise class building blocks for 'Systems of Things.'"
Co-Innovation for SustainabilitySAP has joined forces with researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada to develop a sensor-driven system that will help optimize the performance of green roofs in order to maximize gains in energy efficiency and rainwater management and minimize the time and expense of maintenance. The joint team has built two green roofs as part of an ongoing collaboration that aims to install several hundred-thousand square feet of sensor-based green roofing on a variety of building types.
Data such as moisture content, run-off composition, fire detection, temperature and light levels is expected to be collected to provide real-time monitoring, which will enable building managers to check the status of roof performance without climbing up to the roof. Building managers and home owners will be able to access the information through the Web or mobile applications and will even be able to monitor and control their roofs remotely.
Co-Innovation to Improve Worker Safety and Make Construction SmartSK Solutions is the leading software provider for anti-collision systems for any type of mobile vehicle. The company is working with SAP on a joint project at a construction site in Dubai to help enhance worker safety, improve productivity and reduce costs through the use of sensor-based data to prevent cranes and construction vehicles from colliding. The collaboration aims to create an innovative system to help engineering and construction companies to gather actionable data from mobile field workers, equipment and operational processes. Optimizing cost, time and task management of cranes and other equipment can result in significant increases in productivity, which helps improve time-to-delivery of construction projects. Modern cranes are immense, able to lift loads of more than 19 tons to heights more than 80 meters. Crane operations risk large sway of hanging objects and catastrophic collisions, creating dangerous situations. Construction companies are turning to M2M technologies to help increase productivity and reduce collateral safety risks.
SK Solutions deploys sensors on cranes and construction vehicles to pull data such as 3-D motion control via inertial motion unit, location via GPS and load weight, equipment usage and wind speed and direction. This data is loaded first into the Navigator real-time operating system and its on-board set of applications, including collision avoidance. The data is then fed through the SK Navigator Anywhere Agent, which uses SAP technology. Site and project managers monitor the equipment via a dashboard built with SK Asteroid, which uses the SAP HANA platform, SAP 3-D Visual Enterprise applications and SAP Lumira software. SK Asteroid 360 Middleware is a cloud-based platform that provides connectivity to SAP Business Suite software.
SAP is also collaborating with the International Barcode of Life consortium to create Big Data-enabled applications to protect global biodiversity.
