*By Glênio Araújo
Once the law that promises incentives to the Internet of Things has been sanctioned, the expectation is that the measure will heat up the sector, make technology cheaper, bring investments to Brazil and generate more than 10 million jobs in the coming years, according to the Ministry of Communications.
On the other hand, technology emerges as one of the enablers to promote digital transformation and support new business models in the post-pandemic. In a world of so many opportunities, in a country of continental dimensions, how should this advance impact our life in Brazil?
First, it is necessary to say that the advancement and popularization of this technology should not take place “by jet” in the country. This is because Brazil still needs to invest in adequate infrastructure to support the large scale of this type of technology outside large urban centers.
This does not mean, however, that the sector is not advancing – and some segments can exemplify this dynamic very well. In practical terms and closer to the daily lives of most citizens, the use of IoT to connect card machines and vehicle trackers has been widely used for some time.
Another sector that has this advanced use in the country is manufacturing, with industry 4.0. It is noteworthy that the advance is mostly present in large factories and companies with strong investment strength, but their advances are already remarkable.
The use of IoT to improve the safety of employees in factories and plants, activating alerts for workers who are at risk or who are not using PPE, or if anomalous oscillations in structures are identified, are some of the successful applications that Minsait has accomplished. The company also leverages IoT for operational efficiency by capitalizing on data from IoT devices to optimize costs and maximize asset life through data-based predictive maintenance. In fact, thanks to the design and implementation of solutions such as these, Minsait has already reduced the operating costs of supervising assets in high-risk areas by up to 50%, minimizing the need for human action to prevent accidents.
Moving on to other spheres, the electricity sector is another close example, especially with regard to the development of solutions related to decarbonization and energy efficiency. Points such as energy storage, distributed generation, electric mobility and active demand management, which are widely discussed, depend on the advancement of technologies such as IoT and Big Data to expand their potential in the country.
In this context, Minsait has supported the largest producer of renewable energy in an important European country to achieve high levels of anticipation and control, through the adoption of an IoT and Big Data platform that allows the continuous processing of more than 200 signals from its 1,500 turbines to convert them, using advanced analytics, into the knowledge that allows this company to forecast the next day's wind production, thus maximizing its profitability and avoiding deviation penalties.
The healthcare industry can also benefit greatly from the use of IoT. With connected devices, it will be easier than ever to make diagnoses and cross-reference information to gain benefits. Some practical examples of this are automatic cloud storage, patient empowerment and autonomous recording of information.
Several years ago Minsait positioned itself as a pioneer with a tele-assistance and monitoring solution in hospitals, enabling real-time, remote and unattended analysis of clinical variables of chronic patients through IoT devices, as well as reducing displacements to hospitals in up to 40% and medical trips to homes in around 20%. Therefore, the IoT has not only become a hospital efficiency tool, but has since established new levels of quality of life for these patients, maintaining their safety and control, without implying periodic and unnecessary visits to the hospital.
Agribusiness also has its share of benefits. Efficiency in production, transport and planting are already a reality and are supported by data to minimize losses. Making the country advance in the world ranking of food production is certainly an interest for Brazilians who work in this sector – one of the most representative for the country's economy.
At the other end, in terms of sectors with an even smaller application of the internet of things, there is meteorology, through the concept of “weather of things”. Basically, it is the use of data – in addition to the traditional and well-known satellites – to provide super-accurate forecasts regarding the weather forecast, an extremely useful factor if we consider risky regions or flood forecasts, for example.
The use of connected drones, pollution meters and autonomous cars also fall into this scope. For its broad development in the country, the approval and use of 5G must play an essential role, contributing not only to the individual connection of each sector, but to the construction of an even greater final objective: that of smart cities.
In recent years, the IoT has played a leading role in transforming cities into Smart Cities. The centralization and cross-exploitation of data from the different "verticals" of the city (transport, communications, lighting, tourism, etc.) enabled the creation of sophisticated use cases that optimized the use of resources in cities, such as: intelligent lighting, generating savings of around 40% in electrical consumption and smart irrigation, with savings of up to 25% in water consumption.
From a technological point of view, companies looking to advance in IoT will be challenged to revisit their technology strategy and architecture. At the “end of the day”, IoT is about data, “Things” generate data and this will be generated on an ever-increasing scale, requiring an architecture that is capable of capturing, processing and storing it. Furthermore, with the IoT, a door for implementing new use cases opens and these, in turn, require complementary technologies such as streaming solutions for analysis real time, microservices, Artificial Intelligence and edge computing.
In this context, it takes a lot of attention not to get lost in this universe of new possibilities. It is necessary to prioritize the use cases to be implemented, correctly define the roadmap evolution of the technological architecture and choose the solutions to be implemented properly. Here, it is worth remembering that the solutions available on the market are increasingly diversified and overlapping, leading to an increase in complexity in the selection and decision-making process. This is a point where we have brought a lot of value to our customers. By combining knowledge from different industries with technological knowledge, we have been able to accelerate this entire journey and, above all, optimize our clients' investments.
* Glênio Araújo, Senior Manager of Advanced Technologies at Minsait in Brazil
Notice: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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