The future of business applications as dependent on cyber-physical system collaboration was presented at the International Conference for Industrial Technology (ICIT) in Cape Town yesterday, signifying the rise of the “fourth industrial revolution”.
A research project called Business Web, a business environment that leverages cloud computing and paves the way for the emerging mobile enterprise application market, was revealed today by Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing (SAP).
According to Stamatis Karnouskos, Research Expert at SAP: “The idea is to be able to take, to understand what’s in the real world [and apply it].
“We try to abstract information from the real world and integrate them to KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in real-time, [so that] better-informed business decisions can be made.”
Karnouskos presented on the role of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) in modern enterprises, stating that it will drive the fourth industrial revolution as an active area for research and development within the next five to seven years, up to 2020.
He added: “Only by having the information, the picture becomes clearer to provide new insights [and] to assist towards better business decisions.”
The new developments in the industry are driven by the easy application of information through web abilities, he explained, referring to the different options that will make such a platform possible through key technology trends such as of virtualisation of soft- and hardware, enhancing the functionality of the systems.
A cloud-based project underway, called Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), constitutes out of a mashup of information for mobile application and will have influence of note, driving mobile accessabile next generation systems.
Smart Grid city, a complex system communicating through connecting devices, is an example of such a system.
Cloud infrastructure will enable the incorporation with physical systems with its scalability and seamless updates, among other attributes.
The researcher acknowledged security is an ongoing challenge to which the SAP pays closer attention, as many role players overemphasise the functionality of the concept, not focusing on the safety risks it poses for consumers, for example the loss of privacy.
According to Karnouskos, SAP also run several research projects in South Africa where technologies for emerging economies are being investigated.
Karnouskos is one of the keynote speakers at the IEEE-hosted conference underway at the Pavilion Conference Centre in Cape Town until February 27.
