At the interface between future electric cars & the power grid, information technology (IT) and telecommunications are more demand than ever. At the International Motor Show, technology suppliers show why they are indispensable in the overall concept.

“Electromobility is reorganizing the economy.” It will go hand in hand with breaking up entire value chains and leading to stronger networking of hitherto largely unconnected branches of the economy, “which include the automotive, energy, and IT and telecommunications industries, among others “.

IT and telecommunications will play a decisive role in the value creation system of electromobility. “This includes hardware manufacturers and service providers, software and IT service providers, telecommunications companies and providers of media content.”

IT: Using Information Technology For Electromobility

Sum up the benefits of information technology in the broad field of electromobility: “From a higher-level perspective, a car becomes an end device in a network.”

And the IT industry itself? They can live very well with this new “operator role” as a network supplier. Take Siemens as an example: the company is showing its “e-car sharing” solution at the IAA, which has already been tested on twelve e-cars in Berlin. Each vehicle is equipped with a mobile onboard computer that displays information on the reservation duration, the charge status or the remaining range.

Using satellite navigation (GPS) and communication with a higher-level control center, the driver can also be shown the route to the next free parking space with a charging facility. Rent, parking fees and charging costs can also be billed automatically using secure data transmission via the onboard unit. E-car sharing can also be linked to traffic information and control systems.

And, also very important: Reservation and billing processes for rent, parking and charging and, for example, environmental zone tolls are carried out automatically, legally binding and via secure data transmission. It is precisely these diverse possibilities through which IT can bring its strengths to the overall e-car concept and make the whole thing practicable in the first place.

IT Can Bring Its Strengths To The Overall Concept Of Electromobility

Zoltan Notti, who is responsible for electromobility in the research department of the software company SAP, knows that too. Under his leadership in the “Future Fleet” project, SAP was the first company to test up to 27 purely electric vehicles in its company car fleet in Wall Dorf and the surrounding area, powered exclusively by electricity from renewable energy sources. In the project, the software company built the necessary technical and organizational infrastructure together with the Mannheim energy company MVV Energies.

The overall impression that Notti got from the perspective of the software supplier SAP from the project, which lasted until the beginning of September, is good: “We built up valuable know-how during the project. From my point of view, e-vehicle fleets from companies are an initial niche that can become attractive for a software manufacturer like us in the future. “

In addition to the creation of new components, the company was also able to benefit from the core competencies of SAP. Note: “For example, it is important to establish coherent billing models for charging vehicles and also to develop software that helps motorists to master the range problem of the vehicles.”

Cross-Border Electromobility Has To Cope With A Multitude Of Challenges

And indeed: So far, questions like “How does the payment work when the batteries are charged?” Have not been at the center of the high-profile discussion about environmentally-friendly mobility. But research and industry have to answer such questions also how a solution for cross-border e-mobile traffic can be found. Who, for example, provides a driver from Constance with an adequate column when he drives over to his Swiss neighbor? The intelligent power grid, the smart grid, which is often used in this environment, is given a completely new twist.

The complexity of the problems shows that in the future, those IT companies will be ahead of the game if they conceptually occupy such niches – or who can grab a large piece of the overall cake-like Siemens: “With the car-sharing system, we are going an important step towards a holistic approach to electromobility,”. 

ALSO READ: Companies Are Increasingly Concerned About IT Security

Securing corporate data has become a top priority for management. Many CEOs realize that “security” can only be achieved, with a consistent company policy. This applies to your company building and the use of mobile devices, and the use of the cloud.

“Big companies know they have hijacked PCs in their operations.” Therefore, they also know they could be liable for data protection violations, as stipulated by the data protection law – with corresponding damage to the image. The attackers, who “phish” more and more specifically for information, also use smartphones and tablet PCs, which are particularly popular with executives, as a gateway into the company network.

“We have already discovered botnets on Android smartphones, which have the greatest security gaps.” Such hijacked bots can be misused in two ways: to smuggle in Trojans that prepare further actions, and secondly to send high-priced short messages (premium SMS) unnoticed.

IT Security: Mobile Security Makes Sense For Smartphones

Mobile security would therefore be advisable, but around 60% of smartphone users do not even know that appropriate antivirus software is available, let alone install it. This was the result of a current sample from the manufacturer Kaspersky Labs. Symantec wants to counteract this with both protective software and a platform: The Hydroid platform analyzes the 1.4 million Android apps, to which 3000 new ones are added every day, and wants to inform app users in real-time about the trustworthiness of an app in the future.

“Mobile security can also be ensured,” “that a company provides its employees with secure mobile devices.” With Deepsea, McAfee presents a hardware and software solution developed with Intel that protects mobile devices below the operating system level target.

Guidelines And Specifications For More IT Security

But companies are best protected by security and privacy policies and procedures. Unfortunately, such specifications are often switched off for the sake of productivity. Therefore, the trend is towards comprehensive and, above all, automated solutions. Such suites protect either the end-user across platforms or the company as a whole.

SIEM suites offer “Security Information” and “Event Management,” bringing together the information they receive from the network and the end devices and comparing them with company policy. This guideline can assess the risk of a covert attack or vulnerability based on assets (which values ​​must a company protect first, such as license and copyrights?) Or based on risk (how expensive would the failure of specific IT services be?).

Another problem for children is cloud security. “Today, applications that were developed at a time when IT security was of much less importance are migrating to the cloud.” “These are, for example, in-house developments or adapted open-source software.” If this software is then not adapted, significant security risks will arise. The most effective antidotes are web application source code repair and guidelines.

The Cloud Is The Problem Child Of IT Security

This is where Symantec’s O3 offer comes in. “The O3 platform combines access control and data protection with governance, which ensures compliance with guidelines”. The access control includes proof of identity and authentication, data protection is guaranteed by DLP (Data Loss Prevention), and encryption. A third layer is to ensure governance so that all cloud-relevant security events are visible and audited. Data storage, backup, and recovery are increasingly provided in the cloud. “These are, for example, in-house developments or adapted open-source software.” If this software is then not adapted, significant security risks will arise. The most effective antidotes are web application source code repair and guidelines.

ALSO READ: Industrial Jobs: What Keeps Skilled Workers In A Company

Industrial Jobs: As a new study by Parable of employees in production shows, access to modern technologies has a decisive influence, on the choice of employer. The corona pandemic is leaving its mark on the labor market ever more clearly: On the one hand, many jobs were lost, especially in the low-wage sector. On the other hand, well-trained specialists in numerous industries are increasingly thinking about changing or reorientation.

The USA is recording a real wave of layoffs under “The Great Resignation.” But companies in many other countries also fear that it could affect them. Against this background, the study “The State of the Connected Frontline Manufacturing Worker, 2021” shows that more urgently needs to be done to attract and retain young people for industrial jobs.  

Industrial Jobs: Employees Want Digital Equipment

The report illuminates employees’ perspectives in production, maintenance, and occupational safety regarding their professional environment and the use of technology in the workplace. Parable also examined the effects of the ongoing pandemic. The study results underline how important technical equipment is for industrial jobs and their attractiveness. Forty-five percent of the production workers surveyed in India, Germany, France, Spain, Great Britain, and the USA said they could imagine changing employers for a more modern, digital environment.

The respondents also include the provision of mobile technologies in such an environment. This includes a smartphone or tablet to get the job done better. Currently, an international average of 41 percent of the survey participants states that their company provides such digital tools.

Overcoming Labor Shortages And Skills Gaps

The desire for more digital support hits companies at a time of massive upheaval. In the US, it is estimated that up to 2.1 million industrial and manufacturing jobs will remain unfilled at the same time. Younger generations need to be convinced that industrial jobs are a future-oriented career choice. This connection is becoming increasingly important internationally.

The study by Parable also shows how important the equipment of industrial workplaces is. Half of the respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 and 60 percent of the 25 to 34-year-olds say that access to technology plays a role for them when they change jobs. At the same time, younger workers, in particular, are not so strongly attached to their company: In all countries, 29 percent of those questioned between the ages of 18 and 24 plan to stay in their current position in production for less than two years; in Germany, it is even one in three.

Industrial Jobs: Employees Over 55 Also Want A Digital Environment

Even in the highest age group from 55 years of age, attractive technical equipment in industrial workplaces is a reason for 41 percent to change employers. This makes the topic even more important for attractiveness as an employer than in other countries. And the older generation in this country is less attached to their job than their colleagues in the USA or other European countries: While the international average of 65 percent of those surveyed aged 55 and over have been in their current employment for ten years or more, this is the case only to 45 percent of the oldest employee group. 

“It’s clear: Manufacturing workers want digital technologies that help them do their jobs better. This applies across all age groups but is particularly true of digital natives. They are of crucial importance in closing the looming labor shortage in the manufacturing industry,”. “If manufacturers want to attract and retain young talent for the important tasks in production, they have to provide mobile, digital tools and training opportunities on-the-job – in the formats that millennials and Generation Z are used to using.”

Industrial Jobs: This Is What Skilled Workers Want

According to the survey, many companies have introduced new technologies that make work easier for their employees due to the pandemic. Across all countries, the rate here is 42 percent, as is the case. The tools introduced include, in particular, digital tools for collaboration . This is followed by digital work instructions and mobile devices by a large margin.

So there is still a lot to do for industrial companies. When asked which tool employees would prefer to convince their company to introduce one, almost half opted for digital work instructions—followed by mobile devices and digital tools for better collaboration . In contrast, only 22 percent were in favor of more robotics. And only 14 percent of the study participants would like more wearables such as data glasses.

Non-Digital Work Processes Still Dominate

Although today’s production facilities are far more technologically advanced, workers, technicians, and machine operators follow workflows, and working together has hardly changed. The vast majority of respondents in all countries still use all or part of the paper to follow instructions and keep track of their work. When communicating with other team members, most respondents worldwide rely on oral, face-to-face communication and the telephone . However, neither offers the same transparency and traceability as digital channels. And all of this, although 80 percent of the study participants say they have no concerns about using digital tools.

“The pandemic and the labor shortage that partly resulted from it have shown how important flexibility is in the value chain. Companies that do not adopt new technologies face a significant competitive disadvantage. The same goes for those who don’t rethink the way they hire, train and educate,”. “If we equip the people who are at the center of production with digital, networked tools, this strengthens the supply chains – and at the same time improves the everyday work of the employees. And that is more important today than ever. “

ALSO READ: Mobile Communications Drive All Industries Forward

Business Analytics: Hardware manufacturers have long complained that their further developments do not significantly accelerate, the applications because the programs available for this do not appropriately use the new possibilities. But improvement is in sight. The need for robust data analysis tools is booming. The reason for this is the rapidly increasing flood of data – both for structured and for the many new unstructured data, such as those generated by the popular social media channels Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Keyword: big data.

IDC market researchers predict that this market will swell by 8.9% to just under $ 34 billion this year. According to the report, Oracle is the market leader with a 20% share, followed by SAP, IBM, SAS Institute and Microsoft.

Business Analytics: Classic Software Is Powerless To Face Big Data

But despite these impressive growth rates, the business analytics offering is in a crisis. “Classic analysis

software is relatively powerless to face the new challenges posed by big data”. Although the hardware computing power is getting better and better, most traditional programs can hardly use the many new hardware features such as multi-core processing and column-oriented database organization in the main memory since they are strictly sequential processing.

To change that, the providers are currently pursuing two strategies: bundling software with hardware in an appliance. EMC follows this path with Greenplum, and IBM also offers such a solution with the Netezza appliance. The second way is to recode the software to take full advantage of all modern hardware features. But this is not only a very costly and time-consuming process – it is also a precarious approach. “With parallel processing, you always have to consider what you can process independently of each other, and when does a program step have to wait for the end of another process – this is particularly tricky with time series,” about one of the most significant Recent SAS projects because his company has completely rewritten the analytics software.

Hadoop Is Growing In Popularity

In addition to these two paths, i.e. application-optimized hardware or rewritten software. The use of the open-source software Hadoop is becoming more and more popular. Apache sells a data processing platform, and many large hardware providers now offer that.

Oracle has been offering Hadoop for a long time. IBM also uses this platform. Microsoft even recently stopped developing its own big data analytics platform, Dryad, favoring Hadoop. EMC, Teradata and Hewlett-Packard also offer their hardware in a package with Hadoop.

The fact that so many established providers rely on Hadoop software is due to its remarkable architecture, which on the one hand, fully exploits all the possibilities of parallel processing, but on the other hand, does not require any special hardware.

The reason for this is the rapidly increasing flood of data – both for structured and for the many new unstructured data, such as those generated by the popular social media channels Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Keyword: big data. The second way is to recode the software to take full advantage of all modern hardware features. But this is not only a very costly and time-consuming process – it is also a precarious approach. Oracle has been offering Hadoop for a long time. IBM also uses this platform. Microsoft even recently stopped developing its own big data analytics platform, Dryad, favoring Hadoop. EMC, Teradata and Hewlett-Packard also offer their hardware in a package with Hadoop.

ALSO READ: “Big Data Comes Faster Than Many Think!”