In the run-up to the event, we spoke with Marcel Klein, Strategic Partner Manager, plusserver, about data lakes and digital sovereignty and the central challenges of Industry 4.0.

At our Mobility Competence Group meeting,“Urban Mobility – Interaction of IoT and Mobility for the Implementation of Mobility Solutions”, eco entered into discussion with various experts from the mobility and IoT environment on the topics of data generation, data usage, data management and data policy. Together with our host, WOBCOM in Wolfsburg, and our CG Mobility Leader Giovanni Coppa, we arrived at exciting content and a highly productive CG meeting.

According to eco Chair of the Board Oliver Süme: “The German federal government Data Strategy must clarify open questions related to the use of data in an economic context.”

eco Survey: 83.7 per cent of IT experts believe that the German industry is in a worse position than its international competitors. 55 per cent complain about bureaucratic hurdles in digitalisation projects in German industry.

In 2023, the eco Association was once again part of the NRW joint stand organised by NRW.Global Business and Koelnmesse at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. This year, the Head of the eco IoT Competence Group, Dr Bettina Horster, took on the position of State Representative for the first time.

At 8.2 per cent, smart solutions in the heating sector are those most frequently used in German households. This is the result of a survey of 2,500 people conducted by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of eco – Association of the Internet Industry in mid-February 2023.

The year 2023 will be the year of artificial intelligence (AI). The hype around ChatGPT, the AI that can write essays, articles or texts within seconds using just a few lines of input, continues unabated. Voice assistants also use the potential of AI and are constantly developing to provide users with even better results....

At the cross-competence group event “IoT CG/ Data Centre CG: Data Centres as an Integrative Element of Sustainable Smart City and Smart Building Solutions”, which was jointly implemented with ABB and its subsidiary Busch-Jaeger Elektro GmbH, eco Association started the discussion on the topic of smart ecosystems with various experts from the IoT and data centre environment.

Holiday time is burglary time, a Smart Home offers appropriate security systems. However, vulnerabilities in Smart Home solutions are also becoming increasingly apparent. Jan Wendenburg, CEO, ONEKEY, explains in an interview how to secure your Smart Home solutions and the integrated connected IoT devices.

What risks and extra costs arise if cybersecurity in IoT use cases is not implemented and monitored along the entire lifecycle? An interview with Axel Dittmann, Senior IoT, Data & AI Technical Specialist EMEA, Microsoft Germany, about best practices and avoidable mistakes.

Christian J. Pereira is Managing Director/Chief Operating Officer at grandcentrix (a Vodafone company), where he manages sales and projects. Christian Pereira is one of the pioneers in the field of cloud and IoT and has been sharing his practical experience in technical articles and lectures for many years.

In the run-up to the event, we spoke to Bastian Faßnacht, Product Manager at NetCologne, about the many possible uses of the LoRaWAN transmission technology and the ThingsNet IoT platform.

How secure are our devices when they connect to the Internet? This is difficult for consumers to discern. The IT security label of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) now provides a solution. The eco Association welcomes this initiative and at the same time appeals to manufacturers and consumers to take responsibility for IT security.

Two years down the line, and the world’s most important IoT congress – the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona – could open its doors once again and the eco Association was there, live in person. As part of the NRW pavilion, eco and several member companies were able to present themselves on location.

Presentation at Mobile World Congress (MWC) on 28 February at 10 a.m., at North Rhine-Westphalia Pavilion in Hall 7, Booth C62 Smart City market boom: eco study forecasts over 17 per cent annual growth Digital technologies and applications make an indispensable contribution to achieving the German climate target...

This year, it’s not just the Covid-19 pandemic, but also the threatening climate change which will continue to drive forward digital transformation in the economy and society. “Digitalisation is part of the solution to many challenges,” says eco Chair of the Board Oliver Süme.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing rapidly, and everyday objects are more and more connected to the Internet and to other devices. It is increasingly difficult for consumers to judge which devices and services have which security features.

At the 26th Broadband Forum of the German ict + medienakademie on 10.11.21 in Cologne’s MediaPark, the question was explored as to why Germany is finding it so difficult to tap the potential for growth and prosperity that lies in the “Smart Rural Areas”.

SmartHome is an integrated topical field in the multi-layered IoT world and is regarded as an important building block in the topic areas of  Smart Neighbourhoods and Smart Cities. But how are devices and components of the SmartHome world technically linked to the Internet?

“Smart cities are inevitably the future in the long term. But what do we have to do to promote smart cities so that we as citizens can benefit faster and better?” With this question, eco board member Prof. Dr. Norbert Pohlmann gave the first important impulse in his welcoming speech.

The SmartHome Initiative Germany and eco Association are joining forces in promoting Smart Home innovations and markets. For the SmartHome Initiative, with its regional networks and more than 100 member companies, the Internet is an essential building block for smart building, living and working.

The safety test standard ETSI EN 303 645, which was already published in mid-2021, is intended to ensure more uniformity of safety standards for IoT devices, especially on the European market. The test standard is a recommendation to manufacturers and addresses all networked consumer IoT devices, especially in the Smart Home sector.

Digital technologies and services enable high CO2 savings in cities and metropolitan areas. In this way, they make a significant contribution to climate protection and are indispensable on the way to a carbon-neutral city, the Smart City study by eco and Arthur D. Little shows.

Digital solutions can help achieve sustainability goals, says Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert. In this interview, he names tools and gives examples of how companies can track and reduce their individual carbon footprint.

The future belongs to Smart Cities, as evidenced by the new joint study by eco Association and the management consultancy ADL. The study forecasts an average annual growth in Germany of over 17 percent, corresponding to an increase in revenues of over 46 billion Euro within five years.

Summa one of 24 new Gaia-X AISBL Board Members DE-CIX as a blueprint for other Internet Exchange operators Harald A. Summa, CEO of DE-CIX, the operator of the world’s leading Internet Exchange in Frankfurt am Main, was one of 24 people elected to the Gaia-X AISBL Board during the organisation’s first general assembly...

qbee AS helps customers to easily digitalise in the field of Industry 4.0 – with smart management and remote maintenance software for embedded Linux devices. In a short interview, Carsten Lehbrink, General Manager at qbee, reveals more about the Norwegian company, current challenges in the industry, and his expectations of eco.

The Service-Meister Consortium announces it will unveil its 2020-developed platform architecture at the end of the year.  Service-Meister is developing innovations using AI to improve the service processes of SMEs.

The quintessential message of eco at the German federal government's Digital Summit, titled “More Sustainability by Means of Digitalisation”: Digitalisation holds enormous potential for sustainability and climate protection.

Logistics is the bottleneck in e-commerce: Eight out of ten online shoppers (85 percent) would like to see a delivery time before the last click when making a purchase. If this information is missing, one in three (32 percent) discontinue their purchase. A trend that is actually intensifying for frequent customers: 44 percent will not snap up an offer on the web if it remains unclear when products will arrive.