Bill Dykas is product manager at Telit. He has more than 15 years of business/market development and product management experience in a broad cross section of technology categories. His career experience with RFID, big data analytics, pervasive computing and software as a service (SaaS) strategies supports his interests in the Internet of Things (IoT) marketplace.
While product manager for Telit IoT Platforms, Dykas worked to develop products and services that connect and integrate machines with enterprise IT systems. This is in combination with his past experience as part of IBM’s pervasive computing division, developing and promoting its products and services for the wireless services marketplace, which enabled him to support the needs in the growing Internet of Things marketplace.
Dykas formed Power.org, a collaborative organization with 11 founding companies and 41 members, which he brought from initial formation to launch in less than six months. He volunteers with the South Florida Technology Alliance on its board and as programs chair. The organization’s goal is to build and support the technology community in South Florida.
Tell us about your company’s state-of-the-art industrial-networking technology?
Bill Dykas, product manager, Telit: The Telit deviceWISE IoT Platform combines cloud and edge products that enable secure IoT data and systems management. These products combine in a different way to secure data movement between edge equipment and enterprise business applications. The orchestration of data movement involves rationalization and transformation delivery to those applications. The IoT systems management services require device and data transport management, edge and cloud analytics that enable real-time intelligence to the industrial network. Both sets of IoT data and system services start through the low latency and high-volume collection of data from industrial machinery and equipment.
What have been the biggest improvements to industrial-networking technology in the past five years?
Bill Dykas, product manager, Telit: Within the services provided by industrial networks, the addition of edge logic for improved data orchestration and timely analysis has improved the latency of making business decisions on the generated data. Additionally, the new next-generation development and adoption of protocols, like LwM2M, have enabled the connection to and the data collection from low-power constrained devices and sensors.
What’s the most innovative or efficient industrial-networking technology application you’ve ever seen or been involved with?
Bill Dykas, product manager, Telit: The most innovative and efficient application I’ve worked on is Telit’s IoT platform, which performs highly with low latency. The platform allows for secure remote management and easy enterprise integration.
Connected machinery is a great implementation and an opportunity to serve both the vendor/manufacturer of the machinery and its user. One of Telit’s largest customers has more than 150,000 units spread across the United States. From an industrial-networking implementer’s perspective, it leverages everything an IoT data and systems management platform offers to enable the user, dealer and manufacturer to access services relevant to them through a Web interface.
How has industrial-networking technology benefitted from remote monitoring and connectivity?
Bill Dykas, product manager, Telit: Secure remote access and management are implemented all over the world in many ways. As part of the Telit IoT Platform, our product connects billions of dollars of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to both OEMs of the equipment and the foundry managers for remote monitoring and management. The OEM benefits from securely accessing the equipment for product lifecycle management, and the factory owner who securely manages who has access to the equipment and when. Similarly, for more discrete access to general manufacturing equipment, the IoT platform has tunneling services that enable direct, controlled access.
Can you explain how software development has changed industrial-networking technology design and production?
Bill Dykas, product manager, Telit: Open-source tools and cloud-based systems have sped up the development, test and launch of new features and services for use in industrial networks.
How do industrial-networking technologies figure into digital-twin platform models being used by manufacturers?
Bill Dykas, product manager, Telit: The use of IoT data and systems management platform by design includes the underlying device definition data structures required in digital-twin services. We are seeing the implementation of digital twins in support of many forms of industrial network applications. These applications support both the long-term maintenance of the device and machinery.
When will industrial-networking technology become IT-friendly enough that engineers are no longer required for installation and operation?
Bill Dykas, product manager, Telit: Our IoT Platform requires little to no industrial network engineering expertise. Most installation and operational activities can be quickly learned and are part of an easy-to-implement experience.
What future innovations will impact the use of industrial-networking technology in discrete-manufacturing operations?
Bill Dykas, product manager, Telit: Next-generation LTE/5G private networks installed in factories improve flexibility and performance inside manufacturing operations. The elimination of hard-wired connections within the four walls of a factory will speed the re-configuration of productions lines while increasing the data speeds and volumes across the industrial network.
