Steve Rogerson reflects on the IMC panel at Embedded World in Nuremberg.

Many years past at an Advantech conference in China, I first came across the phrase co-creation. I actually think the event was also the first time I heard someone say internet of things, and thought it a naff phrase that would never catch on, so shows what I know.

I was not impressed with the idea of co-creation; doesn’t it just mean working together? But really in a world then full of industrial secrets, sharing ideas was often frowned upon. These days, it seems as if every company has a partnership programme.

On top of that, more than two years of a pandemic has honed our skills at collaborating over distances. Everyone had to do it within their own firm so it has now become a common extension to do it between other companies.

This was quite evident at last week’s Embedded World conference and exhibition in Nuremberg, which, though a little smaller than its pre-Covid days, was well attended. And almost everyone was talking about collaboration and partnerships; it appears we no longer do things on our own.

A good example of this was at the IMC’s own IoT panel where Fred Yentz, CEO of IoT Launch led a discussion between Filippo Colaianni from ST Microelectronics, Martin Lesund of Nordic Semiconductors, Moe Tanabian from Microsoft and Tartabit’s James Wert.

Colaianni said it was important to have a partnership programme if the goal was to create an end-to-end IoT service especially with time to market being so important. Working together can speed everything up, he said.

“You need everything to get from your products and boards to the final service,” he said.

Lesund agreed when I caught up with him after the panel. “It is extremely important for everyone to work together,” he told me. “You have a partner programme to help solve things. You really need this.”

As an example, he said a focus these days was low power. This means that everything in a package has to be optimised for this, and that needs collaboration.

“If one element fails, the battery life can go from years to minutes,” he said. “What we try to do for our customers is solve all the pain points on the way to development.”

Earlier in the panel, Tanabian pointed out that the IoT market was switching from hardware to software. Not that hardware was shrinking; it is still growing at about ten per cent a year, just that software is growing faster. A good example of this is in automotive where the goal is the software-defined car.

Tanabian envisaged a time when turning on the car brought the prompt of what new features had been added since it was last driven. No longer will the car be the same as when you bought it, but as with mobile phones there will be updates to improve security and add new features.

“The whole world is going like this,” he said. “Everything is software defined.”

Wert said app updates were becoming more dynamic, and smarter. Not every device will get the same update but it will be based on where it is and for what it is being used. And given updates can reduce battery life, they will only be done when necessary.

However, Wert was quite critical of how IT departments react when security is discussed for IoT. “IT hasn’t a clue what the IoT is,” he said. He said it was important to balance the security you needed with the priorities of what was being deployed. For example, he said do not do certificates because IT says you must. Certificates cost money. Only do certificates if you need them.

Another big change Tanabian said was in device management. You used to plug in a device and would do nothing else unless it stopped working. Then you would try to fix it and if you couldn’t you would throw it away. Now, device management is ongoing with telemetry keeping tabs on what it is doing and how it is functioning.

So, back to co-creation and partner programmes. I quite like this. I have always thought the best breakthroughs happen when you bounce ideas of each other. Just a shame it took a global pandemic for this to move from something that was done between companies only when absolutely necessary to what looks like becoming the backbone of research and development moving forward.