January 2017

5 Steps for Turning Industrial

IoT Data into a Competitive
Advantage
By combining a clear business plan with streaming analytics, organizations can optimize
their internal operations and identify growth opportunities.

T
he Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is flooding
today’s industrial sector with data. Information is
streaming in from many sources — from equipment
on production lines, sensors in products at customer
facilities, sales data, and much more.
Organizations that can find meaning in these rich data
sources will gain a competitive edge. But harvesting
insights means filtering out the noise to arrive at
actionable intelligence.
To do that, industrial leaders need an analytical platform
that generates intelligence in lockstep with business
needs. Understanding the value of the analytical life
cycle — and capitalizing on its potential — is one of the
key elements of a successful IIoT strategy.
This report shows how to craft a strategy that will turn
IIoT data into competitive advantage. It explains how to
evaluate IIoT solutions, including what to look for in end-
to-end analytics solutions. Finally, it shows how SAS has
combined its analytics expertise with Intel’s leadership in
IIoT information architecture to create solutions that turn
raw data into valuable insights.

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5 Steps for Turning Industrial IoT Data into a Competitive Advantage January 2017

The Data Paradox

To see how the IIoT is Analysts predict the global IIoT market could
affecting business, just look top $151 billion by 2020 as it registers an 8%
at the numbers. Analysts
compound annual growth rate.
predict the global IIoT
market could top $151 billion
by 2020 as it registers an
and technology leaders should collaborate to identify IIoT
8% compound annual growth rate.
use cases with the potential to deliver benefits to their
organizations.
Along with this breakneck market growth comes
blistering acceleration in data volumes. According to IDC,
What opportunities exist? Early adopters are using IIoT
the universe of digital information created and distributed
to help develop new products and services; others eye the
each year is doubling every two years and is expected to
chance to mitigate risks by reducing errors in production
reach 44 trillion gigabytes by 2020.
systems or avoiding machine downtime.

Driving IIoT adoption is the underlying value of data.

Once managers create a short list of use cases, they refine
Manufacturers and other industrial firms are turning data
them by establishing the high-level requirements. For
into insights that help make production processes more
example, project leaders determine which data sources
efficient and improve product quality, while reducing
and processes are required for each use case.
maintenance and energy costs and operational risks.
This upfront planning will enable the project team to
The IIoT is even helping organizations transform their
quantify the potential impact on the organization —
business models. For example, an aerospace company
whether that’s product innovation, risk reduction, or
can do more than make jet engines — with IIoT data it can
some other benefit — and what new investments and
provide high-value services that continuously monitor an
change-management efforts will be required to achieve
airline’s fleet to improve equipment performance.
the desired results. Analyses such as these provide the
foundation for estimating the overall return on investment
Five Steps to IIoT Success
(ROI) of the projects being considered. The IIoT
But success requires more than simply accumulating
development team can then prioritize funding requests to
data. To achieve the full benefits of the IIoT, industrial
senior executives for projects that demonstrate significant
organizations must determine what information is truly
ROI potential without requiring massive change
valuable and then act on it quickly to realize the intended
management to bring them to fruition.
business outcomes.

Five key steps can help your organization succeed. Step 2:

STEP 1:
Define IIoT Business Goals
While IIoT capitalizes on digital innovation and analytics,
success doesn’t start with technology decisions. Business
Define an Analytics Strategy
With a clear business case in hand, the IIoT team can scope
out a project’s analytics requirements. Choosing the right
analytics platform is essential for turning large amounts of
data into insights that support the business case.

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5 Steps for Turning Industrial IoT Data into a Competitive Advantage January 2017

When evaluating platforms, assess candidates for security, and integration with storage platforms such as
how well they deliver a holistic analytical life cycle. In Hadoop. The result is a full-fledged IIoT solution designed
particular, look for solutions that: for easy implementation.

• Efficiently prepare, store, and transform data for Step 3:

analytics
• Drive discovery from a range of diagnostic, predictive,
and prescriptive analytic techniques
• Deploy, manage, and monitor analytics in the cloud, the
fog, and on the edge
Emerging technologies can further enhance analysis
efforts. For example, artificial intelligence capabilities
such as machine learning, deep learning, and cognitive
computing use self-learning algorithms to model new
trends and identify potential problems before their
impact is felt.
SAS Analytics for IoT illustrates the advantages of a
comprehensive solution. This platform combines SAS’s
streaming analytics with Intel’s IIoT architecture to cover
the full spectrum of IIoT requirements. The platform
delivers a full suite of analytics capabilities, end-to-end
Assess the Need for Edge Analytics
IIoT users must do more than analyze information.
They need to turn analyses into action, which requires
a management structure designed to operationalize the
insights.
Edge analytics can capture value in real time, and it
deserves special consideration by IIoT planners. Edge
analytics processes the data stream close to the source
of the data. This allows the analytics system to stem
impending problems by shutting down machinery,
triggering alerts, or taking other actions. This capability
for immediate, automated response is not possible if
analysis has to wait until data reaches back-end storage
systems.
Edge analytics offers another important benefit — it filters
data at the source so that only relevant data is sent to the
cloud. This keeps irrelevant information from overloading
networks and storage systems, and it helps managers

An IIoT Checklist

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Define IIoT Define an Assess the Choose the Focus on

business goals analytics need for edge right analytics continuous
strategy analytics platform improvement

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5 Steps for Turning Industrial IoT Data into a Competitive Advantage
focus on what’s most important to the business.
IIoT gateways are an important underlying technology
for supporting edge analytics. An IIoT gateway provides
a bridge between industrial sensors and the existing IT
infrastructure. Thus, the system can communicate status
and performance information to management systems
that monitor the industrial environment for predictive
maintenance and other activities.
Intelligent gateways enable predictive analytics at the
edge for fast responses to potential production failures
or other events. For example, if such a gateway detects
excess vibration in a piece of equipment, the machinery
can be idled or slowed and operators alerted so they can
address the problem before an equipment failure occurs.
While valuable in many IIoT applications, edge analytics
is not required for all use cases. Edge analytics will likely
be needed if project managers answer yes to any of these
questions:
• Is the latency resulting from an edge-to-cloud round trip
unacceptable?
• Are there times when the assets are not connected to
the network?
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January 2017
• Are there barriers (cost, technology, other) to
transmitting all of the required data to the data center?
Step 4:
Choose the Right Analytics Solutions
Analytics is at the heart of successful IIoT deployments,
but setting up analytics often presents one of the biggest
hurdles for new IIoT efforts. For this reason, it’s important
to evaluate analytics technologies as much for their ease
of deployment and ability to minimize project risk as for
the sophistication of their insight tools.
To do this, work closely with those in business and
operations units who will benefit most from IIoT
intelligence. Not all organizations employ data scientists,
which is why the analytics tools should be designed so
these users can slice and dice available information and see
visualizations of the results without having to pull in experts.
When choosing IIoT analytics, decision-makers should
also look for solutions with a track record for minimizing
long-term risk. For example, SAS Analytics for IIoT
built on Intel and SAS technology provides a trusted
environment that IT and operations-technology staffs can
depend on for the long-life requirements of IIoT.
Consider the Intel IIoT gateway architecture used by
SAS Analytics for IIoT. This architecture leverages Intel’s
expertise in manageability to simplify integration with IT
infrastructure and to enable scaling across a multitude of
factory assets.
Organizations also need high-performance cloud servers
and storage systems to efficiently process massive data
volumes. SAS and Intel are working together to help
these organizations select the best platforms for their
applications, including high-performance solutions
expressly designed to handle and store big data.
While speed is essential, performance isn’t the only
 5 Steps for Turning Industrial IoT Data into a Competitive Advantage January 2017

consideration when choosing analytics platforms for IIoT. IIoT’s potential, organizations may require simultaneous
To avoid malicious access, IIoT needs enterprise-class changes in thinking and in culture. The process of gaining
security across all the data gathering, communications, and insight from data, including IIoT data, is by its nature
analytics components. To avoid costly manual maintenance, iterative. It takes a mixture of analytics capability and
manufacturers need a centralized environment that can domain expertise, combined with vision and imagination,
manage all of their IIoT devices. With these requirements in to achieve success. But when this happens, organizations
mind, Intel and SAS worked closely together to provide the see a valuable opportunity to operate more efficiently,
highest levels of protection and manageability, starting with serve their customers more successfully, and establish
the gateway and extending into the cloud. true competitive differentiation in their markets.

Finally, the IIoT environment should provide a scalable Experience has shown that moving to IIoT by chasing the
platform. As IIoT matures and business goals evolve, biggest, most impressive use case often results in failure.
industrial organizations may need analytics in new ways. Many organizations do better by starting with smaller
Care must be taken to ensure that the analytics platform steps such as easy, quickly deployed use cases, or dividing
and architecture can scale to support expanding data and larger projects into multiple parts and then iterating
computing requirements. Tapping solutions designed by toward larger goals over time. This allows them to build
technology leaders such as Intel and SAS ensures the ability on success, gain confidence, develop internal skills, and
to deploy and grow intelligence where it is needed. cultivate wider organizational support for IIoT.

Step 5: Most importantly, manufacturers should take advantage

Focus on Continuous Improvement of end-to-end analytics solutions from leaders such
Because IIoT continues to evolve, industrial organizations as Intel and SAS. By working with established experts,
should regularly assess their use cases and analytics manufacturers can simplify deployment and instead focus
performance, and update these areas as new capabilities on uncovering insights and transforming their business
and business opportunities arise. At the same time, they practices. In this way, organizations will increase their
should re-examine existing deployments to ensure that chances of becoming an IIoT success story.
analytics continues to achieve use-case goals.
To learn more, visit sas.com/IoTSolutions.
There is little doubt that IIoT has the potential to
transform industrial organizations. But to fully realize

SMART FACTORIES BUILT ON COLLABORATION

Intel’s partnerships with IoT leaders such as SAS are bringing transformational change to industries worldwide. With
best-of-breed solutions for smart factories, these partners are helping manufacturers unlock operational efficiencies,
optimize production, and increase worker safety.
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