Businesses buy into future

Wuxi, Jiangsu province has confirmed plans to build China's first national-level measurement and testing center for internet of things-related perception equipment.

Officials from the Wuxi bureau of quality and technology supervision and the Xinwu district government inked a final deal for the project at a signing ceremony on Aug 17.

The new center will be used to test the performance of perception equipment used in the IoT industry, a rapidly growing industry in which Wuxi is a leading player.

Perception equipment are components such as sensors and scanners used to identify bar codes, fingerprints and images. They are integral to all IoT devices and manufacturing perception equipment is a multibillion-dollar industry.

Wuxi is one of China's biggest hubs for the sensor industry and is home to several major industrial parks for sensor manufacturers, including the Wuxi MEMS Park.

The new measurement and testing center will provide world-class laboratory facilities to help the city's perception equipment manufacturers refine and quality-check their technologies.

A 7,000-square-meter laboratory will be built inside the center, which will contain more than 100 million yuan ($15 million) worth of equipment.

The Wuxi government aims to use the center to make the city an even more attractive destination for IoT companies and investors.

The city's proposal to build the project received final approval from China's State General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine on Jan 11, 2017.

According to a new global study released recently, the IoT industry is expected to ramp up in everyday business, with more than three quarters of businesses saying IoT will drive their future success.

The mobile operator Vodafone's annual IoT Barometer Report, based on 1,096 global interviews with business decision-makers, found that 28 percent of organizations have already used IoT. It also found that 89 percent of them have increased their use of IoT because they are seeing the future success and significant returns on investment.

More than 60 percent of businesses have plans to launch IoT technologies.

The portion of spending allocated to IoT has now surpassed that of mobile, with IoT spending accumulating nearly a quarter (24 percent) of IT budgets.

According to the report, small IoT projects can perform well. One example is a China-based distributor that has an IoT project gathering retail sales data. "This application is small, but the impact has been great," it said.

The IoT is a concept in which all tangible objects are connected to the internet and can identify themselves to other devices in order to exchange necessary data for improved efficiency and convenience.

As the IoT moves into the mainstream of business processes, more than half of businesses said they're more concerned about IoT security risks than they were in the past.

Xinhua contributed to the story.

(China Daily 09/09/2017 page6)