* By Francisco Camargo, president of ABES
The (old) Internet
In 1996, more than 20 years ago, the President of the United States at the time, Bill Clinton, edited the Administration's Telecommunications Act of 1996, organizing the initial confusion and launching the directives that allowed us to enter the Internet age. This regulation believed that market forces and technological innovation were the engines of the modern internet. It was an incredible act of political maturity, even in the USA. Its authors knew that something impressive was about to happen and the government would do a great job, staying quiet, letting innovation and private investment flourish.
Nobody foresaw the reach, the economic, social and cultural changes that would follow in these 20 years, since the advent of virtual stores, the end of newspapers and magazines, the entry into the era of the shared economy, smartphones, the end of the great libraries of law firms, and more.
The new Internet
A new internet is appearing on the horizon. The spectrum of the Internet of Things haunts the world. Like any exponential process, no one is able to predict what will actually happen. The IDC predicts a growth of 17.5% per year. IHS estimates that the IoT market will grow from 15.4 billion connected devices in 2015 to 75.4 billion in 2025.
Like 20 years ago, something impressive is happening again.
In 2010, Nest Labs was born with the idea of a smart thermostat, connected to the Internet to keep European homes warm in winter, with the lowest energy consumption. It has evolved into connected cameras, connected printers, and suddenly, we have 17.5 billion connected devices today.
The connected “things” continue to multiply and enrich our lives: appliances, medical devices, smart cars, smart lamps, wearable devices and all kinds of industrial equipment are already connecting and presenting a stimulating scenario for innovation, for business, for public authorities, generating new benefits for society.
IoT in Brazil
The initiative of the MCTIC (Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications) to listen to Brazilian society through a Public Consultation for the construction of a National Plan for the Internet of Things (IoT, in its acronym in English) is commendable, being that some points that permeate the public consultation deserve attention for the future of this plan and to understand if it will, in fact, direct the national effort or will remain only on paper.
The development of IoT in Brazil deserves encouragement and monitoring, but without the need for specific regulation, as we are not going to create an IoT PAL-M. On the other hand, Brazilian participation in international organizations, striving for open and non-proprietary standards is essential.
Many of the challenges posed by applications and solutions based on this technology, such as information security and protection of personal data, are being addressed by specific legislation (Marco Civil da Internet, Consumer Protection Code) or are already grounds for legislative discussion (such as projects for the creation of a General Law for the Protection of Personal Data).
As technology and its different possibilities for use evolve rapidly, the premature imposition of specific standards and regulations for IoT would create restrictions that would be detrimental to Brazil and could stifle the emergence of new applications in this area.
Why should the government certify radio spectrum use products in which the range is short and the minimum power (Bluetooth, NFC, WiFi) and even without the use of radio - purely passive devices, such as GPONS (Gigabit passive optical network)?
ANATEL has to take care of much more important things such as the Legal Security of Public Concessions, the formation of cartels and monopolies, the free flow of data and metadata, cellular and data coverage, the optimization of ERB's (Radio Base Stations), from major utilities in difficult financial circumstances and not from small IoT devices.
The emergence of IoT is an opportunity for Brazilian economic development to modernize the industry and make it more competitive, to improve service provision and make it more productive, to make cities smarter, to improve public education and health, to make government more productive and less bureaucratic.
This is the opportunity for the Brazilian government to pursue medium and long-term planning for the development of the IoT ecosystem in the country and to create ingenious financial solutions for the capitalization and development of this entire ecosystem.
We have the intelligence and creativity to achieve Brazil's global insertion in the global IoT market, especially with regard to the export of software and services, as long as we pursue in international organizations the rules and standards that best meet our interests, fighting against proprietary standards or regional.
The software and information technology services sectors are essential for the development of IoT in the country. In IoT, the simplest device is the beacon, which is just a beacon emitting Bluetooth, and only with software it becomes something useful.
According to the study Brazilian Market for Software and Services 2016, produced by ABES in partnership with IDC, the IT market in Brazil grew 9.2% in 2015, while the average global growth was 5.6%. The software segment alone grew 30% between 2014 and 2015, the year in which the country faced an economic recession with a drop in GDP of more than 3%.
Connected Internet of Things
In a way, the emergence of IoT today has the same characteristics as the early days of the Internet when we were learning and developing new products and services that allowed the explosion of current knowledge and the brutal increase in world data and productivity. Any gaps should be addressed, whenever possible, by traditional market mechanisms, such as self-regulation, standardized contracts, always with a focus on competition and free enterprise.
Cooperation with international entities and with other countries to identify areas of common interest, aiming to participate in the definition of open norms, standards and protocols, discouraging, whenever possible, unilateral measures to create norms, protocols, standards, such as, for example, the forced location of data in certain geographic areas, are welcome and would have a high potential to benefit emerging technologies, such as IoT Made in brazil.
These measures could be a source of encouragement and strengthening of Brazil as an exporter of information technology services with globally scalable IoT solutions.
Cybersecurity and Analytics
Two critical points stand out in IoT applications: Security (cyber security) and Analysis (Analytics) statistics of data and metadata originating from the billions of connected devices, which will allow you to extract the maximum from the IoT.
How Cyber Security, Analytics ended up becoming a separate branch, strongly informed by Big Data, which allows to find correlations beyond those imagined by the formulators of statistical models.
Linked to security, but that must be treated separately, there are privacy and protection of personal data. There is no privacy and data protection without excellent cyber security. Security is a necessary condition, but not sufficient to guarantee individual privacy.
Corporate Ethics, Laws, Regulations, Governance and Compliance are necessary to ensure data privacy and protection.
Public policy makers should encourage safe application development practices. Safety must be part of the project, “security by design”Or when this is not possible due to the high cost of development or the urgency to reach the market, encourage the Application Code Security Audit, which allows the identification of critical vulnerabilities introduced in the code.
Internationalization
Only internationalization will provide Brazilian entrepreneurs with the necessary scale to operate efficiently in this new internet. In today's connected world, international trade would simply not work without the constant flows of data transfer across national borders.
The free movement of data allows Brazilian companies of all sizes and from all industries to bring and bring innovations to the global market, guide their investments, grow and create jobs. The cross-border flow of data particularly allows small and medium-sized businesses to compete in the global economy through access to digital products and services, such as cloud applications, reducing the cost of the necessary infrastructure.
The task of connecting billions of devices between a multitude of different actors is far too complex. To this end, encouraging the adoption of open standards both in terms of device and network connectivity is gaining ground, through which progress is made towards global interoperability, which is the ability of “things” to communicate with each other in a concise and efficient. Due to the complexity and breadth of IoT-based systems and connections, it is not advisable to seek our own standards, but rather to rely on universally recognized global standards.
Human Resources
Education in the country remains a challenge, but all solutions for improving national education are long and medium term. On the other hand, valuable human resources are found throughout the country or abroad.
It is good not to underestimate the strength of the Brazilian diaspora of scientists, technicians and entrepreneurs in the USA and Europe. A census of these resources, which could be recruited remotely, would make it possible to find a shortcut to the deficiencies of national education.
Strategy
Whatever the final plan for IoT in Brazil, some important points must be taken into account:
1. Encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation, with a minimum of new and old regulations;
2. Membership of international organizations for the development of open standards, avoiding proprietary and regional standards;
3. Creation of new financial instruments that allow to capitalize and finance this new ecosystem, without increasing the risk and cost to the government and the BNDES. It is no use for the BNDES to transfer funds at low cost to entrepreneurs and intermediary banks to charge del credere 12% per year;
4. Encouraging to improve the security of end customers, either through safe development practices, or through code auditing and adoption of standards regarding machine-to-machine communication, making hacker attacks difficult;
5. Encouraging the use of Brazilian Human Resources, available here and abroad, removing the barriers that currently exist regarding the outsourcing and outsourcing of specialized labor;
6. Encouragement for the adoption of Codes of Ethics and Corporate Governance regarding the preservation of the privacy of the individual data of people and their devices;
7. Equal promotion of hardware and software development, including in parallel, but essential lines, such as cyber security and analytics for IoT.
8. And most important of all, is that the plan is followed by the current government and those who succeed it.
In view of all these points, it can be seen that there are major challenges to be considered in the National IoT Plan, but the fact is that the IT sector has an essential role in the development of this technology and its insertion in the global value chains. it should be the objective of public policies of encouragement and promotion.
The sector does not need any more rules (since the 1988 constitution, governments, at the three levels, created 5 million regulations and rules, creating a difficult group to interpret), but that the State should base its actions convinced of its important role as an inducer development and the necessary legal security for entrepreneurs.
* Francisco Camargo is President of ABES. Production engineer from Escola Politécnica, the executive has a specialization from Harvard University. Francisco is also the Founder of the CLM Group, a Latin American distributor focused on Information Security, Advanced Infrastructure and Analytics.
In 1996, more than 20 years ago, the President of the United States at the time, Bill Clinton, edited the Administration's Telecommunications Act of 1996, organizing the initial confusion and launching the directives that allowed us to enter the Internet age. This regulation believed that market forces and technological innovation were the engines of the modern internet. It was an incredible act of political maturity, even in the USA. Its authors knew that something impressive was about to happen and the government would do a great job, staying quiet, letting innovation and private investment flourish.
Nobody foresaw the reach, the economic, social and cultural changes that would follow in these 20 years, since the advent of virtual stores, the end of newspapers and magazines, the entry into the era of the shared economy, smartphones, the end of the great libraries of law firms, and more.
The new Internet
A new internet is appearing on the horizon. The spectrum of the Internet of Things haunts the world. Like any exponential process, no one is able to predict what will actually happen. The IDC predicts a growth of 17.5% per year. IHS estimates that the IoT market will grow from 15.4 billion connected devices in 2015 to 75.4 billion in 2025.
Like 20 years ago, something impressive is happening again.
In 2010, Nest Labs was born with the idea of a smart thermostat, connected to the Internet to keep European homes warm in winter, with the lowest energy consumption. It has evolved into connected cameras, connected printers, and suddenly, we have 17.5 billion connected devices today.
The connected “things” continue to multiply and enrich our lives: appliances, medical devices, smart cars, smart lamps, wearable devices and all kinds of industrial equipment are already connecting and presenting a stimulating scenario for innovation, for business, for public authorities, generating new benefits for society.
IoT in Brazil
The initiative of the MCTIC (Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications) to listen to Brazilian society through a Public Consultation for the construction of a National Plan for the Internet of Things (IoT, in its acronym in English) is commendable, being that some points that permeate the public consultation deserve attention for the future of this plan and to understand if it will, in fact, direct the national effort or will remain only on paper.
The development of IoT in Brazil deserves encouragement and monitoring, but without the need for specific regulation, as we are not going to create an IoT PAL-M. On the other hand, Brazilian participation in international organizations, striving for open and non-proprietary standards is essential.
Many of the challenges posed by applications and solutions based on this technology, such as information security and protection of personal data, are being addressed by specific legislation (Marco Civil da Internet, Consumer Protection Code) or are already grounds for legislative discussion (such as projects for the creation of a General Law for the Protection of Personal Data).
As technology and its different possibilities for use evolve rapidly, the premature imposition of specific standards and regulations for IoT would create restrictions that would be detrimental to Brazil and could stifle the emergence of new applications in this area.
Why should the government certify radio spectrum use products in which the range is short and the minimum power (Bluetooth, NFC, WiFi) and even without the use of radio - purely passive devices, such as GPONS (Gigabit passive optical network)?
ANATEL has to take care of much more important things such as the Legal Security of Public Concessions, the formation of cartels and monopolies, the free flow of data and metadata, cellular and data coverage, the optimization of ERB's (Radio Base Stations), from major utilities in difficult financial circumstances and not from small IoT devices.
The emergence of IoT is an opportunity for Brazilian economic development to modernize the industry and make it more competitive, to improve service provision and make it more productive, to make cities smarter, to improve public education and health, to make government more productive and less bureaucratic.
This is the opportunity for the Brazilian government to pursue medium and long-term planning for the development of the IoT ecosystem in the country and to create ingenious financial solutions for the capitalization and development of this entire ecosystem.
We have the intelligence and creativity to achieve Brazil's global insertion in the global IoT market, especially with regard to the export of software and services, as long as we pursue in international organizations the rules and standards that best meet our interests, fighting against proprietary standards or regional.
The software and information technology services sectors are essential for the development of IoT in the country. In IoT, the simplest device is the beacon, which is just a beacon emitting Bluetooth, and only with software it becomes something useful.
According to the study Brazilian Market for Software and Services 2016, produced by ABES in partnership with IDC, the IT market in Brazil grew 9.2% in 2015, while the average global growth was 5.6%. The software segment alone grew 30% between 2014 and 2015, the year in which the country faced an economic recession with a drop in GDP of more than 3%.
Connected Internet of Things
In a way, the emergence of IoT today has the same characteristics as the early days of the Internet when we were learning and developing new products and services that allowed the explosion of current knowledge and the brutal increase in world data and productivity. Any gaps should be addressed, whenever possible, by traditional market mechanisms, such as self-regulation, standardized contracts, always with a focus on competition and free enterprise.
Cooperation with international entities and with other countries to identify areas of common interest, aiming to participate in the definition of open norms, standards and protocols, discouraging, whenever possible, unilateral measures to create norms, protocols, standards, such as, for example, the forced location of data in certain geographic areas, are welcome and would have a high potential to benefit emerging technologies, such as IoT Made in brazil.
These measures could be a source of encouragement and strengthening of Brazil as an exporter of information technology services with globally scalable IoT solutions.
Cybersecurity and Analytics
Two critical points stand out in IoT applications: Security (cyber security) and Analysis (Analytics) statistics of data and metadata originating from the billions of connected devices, which will allow you to extract the maximum from the IoT.
How Cyber Security, Analytics ended up becoming a separate branch, strongly informed by Big Data, which allows to find correlations beyond those imagined by the formulators of statistical models.
Linked to security, but that must be treated separately, there are privacy and protection of personal data. There is no privacy and data protection without excellent cyber security. Security is a necessary condition, but not sufficient to guarantee individual privacy.
Corporate Ethics, Laws, Regulations, Governance and Compliance are necessary to ensure data privacy and protection.
Public policy makers should encourage safe application development practices. Safety must be part of the project, “security by design”Or when this is not possible due to the high cost of development or the urgency to reach the market, encourage the Application Code Security Audit, which allows the identification of critical vulnerabilities introduced in the code.
Internationalization
Only internationalization will provide Brazilian entrepreneurs with the necessary scale to operate efficiently in this new internet. In today's connected world, international trade would simply not work without the constant flows of data transfer across national borders.
The free movement of data allows Brazilian companies of all sizes and from all industries to bring and bring innovations to the global market, guide their investments, grow and create jobs. The cross-border flow of data particularly allows small and medium-sized businesses to compete in the global economy through access to digital products and services, such as cloud applications, reducing the cost of the necessary infrastructure.
The task of connecting billions of devices between a multitude of different actors is far too complex. To this end, encouraging the adoption of open standards both in terms of device and network connectivity is gaining ground, through which progress is made towards global interoperability, which is the ability of “things” to communicate with each other in a concise and efficient. Due to the complexity and breadth of IoT-based systems and connections, it is not advisable to seek our own standards, but rather to rely on universally recognized global standards.
Human Resources
Education in the country remains a challenge, but all solutions for improving national education are long and medium term. On the other hand, valuable human resources are found throughout the country or abroad.
It is good not to underestimate the strength of the Brazilian diaspora of scientists, technicians and entrepreneurs in the USA and Europe. A census of these resources, which could be recruited remotely, would make it possible to find a shortcut to the deficiencies of national education.
Strategy
Whatever the final plan for IoT in Brazil, some important points must be taken into account:
1. Encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation, with a minimum of new and old regulations;
2. Membership of international organizations for the development of open standards, avoiding proprietary and regional standards;
3. Creation of new financial instruments that allow to capitalize and finance this new ecosystem, without increasing the risk and cost to the government and the BNDES. It is no use for the BNDES to transfer funds at low cost to entrepreneurs and intermediary banks to charge del credere 12% per year;
4. Encouraging to improve the security of end customers, either through safe development practices, or through code auditing and adoption of standards regarding machine-to-machine communication, making hacker attacks difficult;
5. Encouraging the use of Brazilian Human Resources, available here and abroad, removing the barriers that currently exist regarding the outsourcing and outsourcing of specialized labor;
6. Encouragement for the adoption of Codes of Ethics and Corporate Governance regarding the preservation of the privacy of the individual data of people and their devices;
7. Equal promotion of hardware and software development, including in parallel, but essential lines, such as cyber security and analytics for IoT.
8. And most important of all, is that the plan is followed by the current government and those who succeed it.
In view of all these points, it can be seen that there are major challenges to be considered in the National IoT Plan, but the fact is that the IT sector has an essential role in the development of this technology and its insertion in the global value chains. it should be the objective of public policies of encouragement and promotion.
The sector does not need any more rules (since the 1988 constitution, governments, at the three levels, created 5 million regulations and rules, creating a difficult group to interpret), but that the State should base its actions convinced of its important role as an inducer development and the necessary legal security for entrepreneurs.
* Francisco Camargo is President of ABES. Production engineer from Escola Politécnica, the executive has a specialization from Harvard University. Francisco is also the Founder of the CLM Group, a Latin American distributor focused on Information Security, Advanced Infrastructure and Analytics.
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