• By providing pre-integrated technological building blocks, validated and proven on Orange networks, the four partners intend to make the lives of IoT manufacturers easier and accelerate the industrialization of IoT projects in general.
“A partnership program to support and accelerate projects by reducing the inherent complexities and controlling levels of risk.”
Analysts forecast continued dynamic annual growth for investments in hardware, software, connectivity solutions and IoT services until 2025.
Many try, few succeed
This considerable growth on paper must nevertheless be put into perspective based on the realities of IoT sensor and solution manufacturers.
Producing and deploying an IoT use case is a long and complex process. It is estimated that it takes more than 18 months on average to get from the initial idea generation phase to the final phase of large-scale industrial deployment.
As explained by Barbara Lucesoli, Head of IoT B2B Catalog at Orange Innovation: “This technical and operational complexity stems from the fragmentation of both the technologies and the market itself. Project developers may be forced to choose between different building blocks within a very fragmented ecosystem—communication modules from X, sensors from Y, a microcontroller from Z—without any guarantee of interoperability or compatibility. And even if they do successfully develop a prototype, there will be no guarantee that the selected components can be reused for the pre-production phase. And there will be the same uncertainty when it comes to moving to the large-scale industrialization phase. Less than 10% of projects will succeed.”
Supporting and accelerating projects
This observation is what led to the IoT Continuum initiative, which brings together providers of key IoT building blocks — Orange for connectivity, Semtech for the provision and management of communication modules, LACROIX for the design and manufacture of devices and STMicroelectronics for microcontrollers, sensors and energy management components. This innovative IoT partnership program aims to support and accelerate projects by reducing their inherent complexities, controlling costs and alleviating levels of risk.
IoT Continuum spans the entire value chain of IoT projects: “Start, Prove, Deploy & Scale.” For each of these three phases, IoT Continuum provides a set of pre-integrated industrial tools, components and solutions, supporting scalability and compatible at every phase, so that there’s no need to redesign as the IoT project progresses. For example, this could take the form of an LTE-M development kit (radio network technology for the IoT) based on industrial components. Whatever you design with this kit can be reused for subsequent phases, removing the need to select the product’s building blocks all over again or redevelop. At SIDO Lyon, on September 20 and 21, 2023, Orange and its IoT Continuum partners will launch two kits facilitating the implementation of the first two phases, epitomizing the continuity suggested by the name “IoT Continuum.”
Scalable solutions
Regardless of whether project developers join the process at the Start, Prove, or Deploy & Scale stage, they are promised a coherent journey. IoT Continuum’s advanced hardware and software solutions are accompanied by support services and technical expertise. Moreover, by bringing together strong, recognized, sustainable and interconnected players from the IoT ecosystem, the very nature of the initiative guarantees speed and ensures that a project will be studied and executed jointly and coherently.
Having already achieved a lot, IoT Continuum continues to support companies in the implementation of their projects. More broadly, the program also aims to address the needs of large verticals involved in the development of cellular IoT, such as logistics and transport, smart building and Industry 4.0.
IoT Continuum kits :
Validated through IoT Continuum, there is a development kit or “Dev Kit” for the initial Start phase. Designed to quickly build a functional lab prototype, this kit allows teams to:
- validate the technical feasibility of a project in just a few weeks or even days;
- test cellular connectivity via the LTE-M network;
- develop their own application.
Then, for the Prove phase, there is the “User Kit”: a turnkey hardware device, composed of an electronic card within a watertight mechanism, with the possibility of connecting additional sensors. It allows teams to:
- validate use case hypotheses in the field, directly and very simply;
- demonstrate proper operation in real-world conditions;
- optimize the design of the end product.
