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The Internet of Things in Solutions Architecture

As internet connectivity increases, an increasing number of small devices now exist with small memory and compute capacities. These sensors connect various physical entities, such as your home alarm, thermal sensors, and car. The data from millions of these connected devices needs to be collected and analyzed. For example, weather data collected from multiple sensors can be utilized to forecast weather for wind energy and farming. There are billions of connected devices in homes, factories, oil wells, hospitals, cars, and thousands of other places that are fueling digital transformation, generating huge volumes of data and growing exponentially. 

As IoT has become very common in the manufacturing industry for handling machine data and optimizing production, the concept of Industrial IoT (IIoT) was developed. Let’s learn more about this now.

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Apache Kafka in the Airline, Aviation and Travel Industry

Aviation and travel are notoriously vulnerable to social, economic, and political events, as well as the ever-changing expectations of consumers. Coronavirus is just a piece of the challenge. This post explores use cases, architectures, and references for Apache Kafka in the aviation industry, including airlines, airports, global distribution systems (GDS), aircraft manufacturers, and more. Kafka was relevant pre-covid and will become even more important post-covid.

Airlines and Aviation are Changing — Beyond Covid-19!

Aviation and travel are notoriously vulnerable to social, economic, and political events. These months have been particularly testing one due to the global pandemic with Covid-19. But the upcoming change is coming not just due to the Coronavirus but because of the ever-changing expectations of consumers.

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Omnichannel Retail and Customer 360 With Apache Kafka

Event Streaming with Apache Kafka disrupts the retail industry. Walmart's real-time inventory system and Target's omnichannel distribution and logistics are two great examples. This blog post explores a key use case for postmodern retail companies: Real-time omnichannel retail and customer 360 with data in motion.

Disruption of the Retail Industry with Apache Kafka

Various deployments across the globe leverage event streaming with Apache Kafka for very different use cases. Consequently, Kafka is the right choice, whether you need to optimize the supply chain, disrupt the market with innovative business models, or build a context-specific customer experience.

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Best Practices for Digital Twin Implementation

Today, forward-thinking companies across industries are implementing digital twin technology in increasingly fascinating and ground-breaking ways. With Internet of Things (IoT) technology improving every day and more and more compute power readily available to organizations of all sizes, the possibilities of what you can do with digital twin technology are only as limited as your imagination.

What Is a Digital Twin?

A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical asset that is practically indistinguishable from its physical counterpart. It is made possible thanks to IoT sensors that gather data from the physical world and send it to be virtually reconstructed. This data includes design and engineering details that describe the asset’s geometry, materials, components, and behavior or performance.

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IoT Architectures for Digital Twin With Apache Kafka

A digital twin is a virtual representation of something else. This can be a physical thing, process or service. This post covers the benefits and IoT architectures of a Digital Twin in various industries and its relation to Apache Kafka, IoT frameworks and Machine Learning. Kafka is often used as a central event streaming platform to build a scalable and reliable digital twin and digital thread for real-time streaming sensor data.

I already blogged about this topic recently in detail: Apache Kafka as Digital Twin for Open, Scalable, Reliable Industrial IoT (IIoT). Hence that post covers the relation to Event Streaming and why people choose Apache Kafka to build an open, scalable and reliable digital twin infrastructure.

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Top Applications for IoT in the Food and Beverage Retail Industry

With the rise of hardware and software platforms to connect every object in the physical world to the Internet, IoT is a trend that has come a long way. It is molding how people interact with their environment and how they have come to rely on smartphones and the Internet to fulfill daily tasks and requirements. And similar to a lot of industries, it is also making its way into the food and beverages industry. IoT is making every aspect of the food industry smarter through a combination of IoT smart connected products gathering data throughout the supply chain and intelligent algorithms, converting them into smart insights. Let us take a look at some applications within the industry that are already transforming how we think about food manufacturing, processing, and safety.

1. Supply Chain Management, Traceability, and Product Recall

A combination of digital tags on everyday consumer products and tracking sensors on transportation facilities can enable manufacturers to keep track of their products at every stage within the supply chain, leading to more efficient and leaner supply chain operations. Zeroing on and connecting to the source of production to initiate product recalls in case of damaged goods becomes simpler and faster by connecting every item on a batch and serial level to the Internet. Brands can ensure ingredients for finished food products are all sourced ethically and responsibly while providing this information to their customers if individual ingredients are also hooked to the web.