| | March 20146CIOReviewOpinionBy Ron Sege, Chairman & CEO, Echelon Corp.Ron SegeTHE COMINGWhat It Means for IT and Facilities ExecutivesEchelon Corporation (NASDAQ:ELON) specializes in smart grid Infrastructure, Energy Control Networks connecting utili-ties to customers enabling net-working and control of everyday services. Headquartered in Cali-fornia, the company has a market cap of $90.58 million.The rise and development of the Industrial Internet of Things, or IIoT, which includes enterprise applications, has many parallels with the development of the Internet for computers. By seeing how the Internet progressed, we can extrapolate where the IIoT might be headed -- and see what needs to be done by corporate IT and facilities executives to leverage this wonderful new platform.For starters, the vast installed base of device networks -- the underpinnings of the IIoT --currently looks remarkably like the computer networking world in the 1980s. At that time, competing networking systems from companies including IBM, DEC, Data General, and WANG had developed into large islands that benefited each supplier and their customers, but made it difficult or impossible to communicate across technologies.Today's control networks have some billion devices operating in many unconnected islands. For instance, in the realm of building automation, air-conditioning sys-tems cannot communicate with lighting systems, even in the same building, and security systems talk yet another language on another island. And with the advent of the IIoT, new devices and applications
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