As the industrial IoT hype intensifies, the number of connected industrial devices is set to triple in five years.
Growing on average of 20% each year, the number of connected industrial controllers is predicted to increase three-fold from 2014 to 2020, delivering what is being called the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
‘The Industrial Network Technologies and Control Systems: The Opportunities and Challenges for IoT Services and Platforms’ report forecasted programmable logic controllers (PLC) to register the highest growth.
The diffusion of -based industrial protocols, allied with improved intelligence of industrial devices, has reduced the differences between coEthernet and IPnventional and industrial networks.
This enables an easier interconnection between enterprise IT applications and OT systems, including the industrial equipment and the associated software, such as SCADA.
The study found the technological shift is being ushered in by vendors like ABB, Siemens, Schneider Electric, and Rockwell Automation.
Eugenio Pasqua, Research Analyst at ABI Research, said: "Through the adoption of IoT technologies, industrial organisations can make better use of the huge amount of data generated inside their facilities and extract more meaningful information.
"This allows a better vision of what happens along the whole supply chain, achieving better performance at lower operating costs and the ability to react faster to changes or issues."
