Business View Oceania | Volume 4, Issue 3

19 20 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3 INTERNET OF THINGS ALL I ANCE AUSTRAL I A ( IOTAA) identifying strategic opportunities for economic growth and social benefit. “Australians, I wouldn’t say are early adopters, but we’re fantastic at dealing with crises. We are late to the table, but then we move like greased lightning,” Zeichner says. “I’d like to bypass that and do a bit more planning and a bit more leadership, a bit more ‘putting out there’ earlier.” To do so, the IoTAA operates eight different workstreams that break down the needs of individual sectoral domains, including food and agriculture, smart cities, water, energy, manufacturing, transportation, health and construction. Zeichner cites the example of measuring lettuce leaf wetness as a solution identified in the food and agriculture workstream. If a retailer requests 1000 heads of lettuce from its supplier, it will just get 1000 heads of lettuce at random. However, depending on how wet the leaves were when they were picked, those same 1000 heads of lettuce could end up rotten by the time they hit the shelves. He explains, “So don’t say 1000 lettuces, say 1000 lettuces that will last two weeks minimum on the shelf, and that means you have to measure how wet the leaf is. That will reduce wastage in the journey to the shelf and eventually home and less food will end up in the bin.” It’s a really simple case of having data about the products. Zeichner notes, “It’s used through retail, it’s used through distribution, it’s used at the farm and that’s an end-to-end thing you can do with IoT. So the farmers that do that are preferred as the place to go because the retailers now know that they can get lettuce that will last longer, and farmers know they’re not picking stuff that’s going to be wasted. It saves on wastage, cost, and everything else.” IoTAA has five “enabler” workstreams that break down into collaboration, data use, cybersecurity, interoperability, and start-ups. Each one of the The Alliance has faced challenges in getting people to adopt IoT solutions, but those challenges are also why it’s so important that the organisation exists. “The reason for the challenges are a whole lot of interesting cultural and organizational factors in Australia,” Zeichner explains. “There’s complacency here. There’s resistance to collaboration, which can be an advantage in many ways but in other ways it’s not. That independence also means there’s a lack of sharing, which although fundamental in the Internet of Things, runs contrary to ingrained business practices and is not something we naturally do.” To face those challenges, the association has plans to accelerate the adoption of IoT in Australia through supporting and activating collaborations, promoting and enabling evidence-based policy and regulation, and 2016, following a study commissioned by the Communications Alliance, which Zeichner had completed with a colleague around the opportunity for Australia in Internet of Things. “The study came up with the observation that there was no industry grouping or government initiative that was there to help underpin our adoption of IoT,” he explains. “The biggest problem we saw was the issue across the technology-domain divide. We have a whole lot of vendors who know their technology, but know nothing about their customer.” Today, IoTAA aims to connect data, devices, people, processes and things to the internet as a way to help people make more informed decisions and get the best outcomes. The ultimate goal is to boost Australia’s future success, productivity, competitiveness, jobs and economy. IoTAA CEO, Frank Zeichner The GoannaAg GoRainSat is an automatic rain gauge connected to the Myriota Network.It can send rainfall data from anywhere in the world and operates for years without maintenance thanks to the self-enclosed connectivity and power supply. Image courtesy of Myriota The Myriota Sense&Locate is a ready to deploy IoT solution for sensor input with in-built GNSS tracking.With low power consump- tion and enclosed antenna, it offers a maintenance free option for monitoring in remote locations. Image courtesy of Myriota IoT is transforming the Australian food and agribusiness sector. IoTAA member, Goanna Ag’s GoField Plus monitors crop stress levels, measures and forecasts water use and identifies optimum time to maximise yield from applied irrigations. Image courtesy of Goanna Ag.