IoT Impact conference brings industry together

Australia’s largest IoT conference and exhibition, IoT Impact, was held last month at the University of Technology Sydney and has been hailed a great success.

Organised by peak body IoT Alliance Australia (IoTAA), the event attracted a total attendance of 994 people, comprising 736 business attendees and 258 participating exhibitors, sponsors and speakers.

Presenting the welcome address, the chair of the IoTAA board, Gavin Smith, President of Bosch Australia, emphasised the need for Australia to “seize the IoT opportunity”.

A diverse range of experts from all corners of Australian business featured on the conference program. Presentations included content produced for the key industry sectors of agri-food, water, energy, smart cities, connected automated vehicles and manufacturing.

Harry Debney, CEO Costa, detailed how his company, Australia’s largest horticultural company, considered itself to be more like a technology company than a food grower.

Terri Benson from South East Water spoke about the digitalisation of their daily operations and meeting their customer priorities.

Austrade CEO Dr Stephanie Fahey urged the audience to embrace technology and to promote Australian IoT businesses, while Ed Santow, the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, provided the keynote address… broadening the data discussion beyond privacy into ethics and leading to a highly engaged panel session.

There was also an impressive line-up of international speakers, including: Christopher O’Connor from IBM (USA), Clayton Fernandez from Microsoft (USA), Stefan Ferber from Bosch Software Innovations (Germany) and Lutz Heuser from [ui!] Group (Germany), all of whom were able to provide an international perspective of the current state of play in the adoption of IoT.

Stefan Ferber said that although there is a lot of hype around IoT, it also requires businesses to “rethink their business models”.

John MacLeod shared how artificial intelligence and IoT can help cut through the data avalanche.

The event also saw the presentation of the IoTAA IoT Awards, held at the grand opening of the state-of-the-art University of Technology Sydney Tech Lab in Botany. The winners in the four categories were:

• Ambassador for 2018 — Catherine Caruana McManus
• IoT Enablement — Reekoh
• IoT Industry — The Yield
• IoT Innovation — Successful Endeavours
   

“We’re at a pivotal time for business in Australia,” said Frank Zeichner, Chief Executive, IoT Alliance Australia.

“IoT will make an enormous impact on nearly every business and industry, and whether that turns into an opportunity for your business or poses a serious threat to your future all depends on how well prepared you are.

“IoT Impact is just the first step in a long road educating Australian businesses.”

Zeichner added that IoT Alliance Australia plans to run IoT Impact again in 2019, and aims to attract even more business people from the industries that stand to really benefit from the IoT.

IoT Impact 2018 was supported by major companies such as IBM, Bosch, Telstra and Microsoft.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Alexey Brin

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