The Industrial IoT Blog
IIoT Insights by Henry Costa
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The Hidden Cost of Cloud-Native IIoT: What the Vendors Won’t Tell You
Read more: The Hidden Cost of Cloud-Native IIoT: What the Vendors Won’t Tell YouEveryone talks about cloud-native IIoT like it’s free money. Just lift your shop floor data to the cloud, connect a few APIs, and boom. Instant insights, zero infrastructure, pay as you go. I’ve been leading IIoT platform evaluations and architecting…
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Top 10 IIoT Use Cases to Watch in 2026
Read more: Top 10 IIoT Use Cases to Watch in 2026Every year, we see new IIoT trends, new buzzwords, and new “top use case” lists. But inside a plant, the reality is usually much simpler. People don’t come to work excited about Industrial IoT. They come to work hoping the…
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IIoT Gateway vs Edge Computer vs Industrial Router: What’s the Difference?
Read more: IIoT Gateway vs Edge Computer vs Industrial Router: What’s the Difference?People ask me all the time: what’s the difference between an IIoT Gateway, an Edge Computer, and an Industrial Router? And honestly, I get why it’s confusing. Vendors love to mix these terms, and sometimes the same box gets called…
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Top 10 IIoT Gateway Devices to Watch in 2026
Read more: Top 10 IIoT Gateway Devices to Watch in 2026Most factories are not fully “smart factories.” They are a combination of legacy assets that remain critical, newer equipment with restricted networks, vendor skids with limited documentation, quality systems requiring trusted data, IT teams enforcing security controls, and business stakeholders…
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Before IIoT Had a Name: Lessons from a Sugar Mill in Brazil
Read more: Before IIoT Had a Name: Lessons from a Sugar Mill in BrazilBack in 2008, I got the chance to work on something completely different from what I had done before. A large sugar and ethanol plant in Brazil. Not automotive. Not steel. Not pharma. This was sugar cane coming in straight…
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IT/OT Integration. Lessons from Pulp & Paper
Read more: IT/OT Integration. Lessons from Pulp & PaperI started working with industrial data integration in 2005, and one of my first major projects was at a large pulp and paper manufacturing site in Brazil. This was back in 2006-2007. At that time, nobody was calling it “IIoT.”…
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Beverage Manufacturing Connectivity Before IIoT Was a Thing
Read more: Beverage Manufacturing Connectivity Before IIoT Was a ThingBetween 2012 and 2014, I worked on two large manufacturing connectivity projects in the beverage industry. At the time, nobody called them IIoT projects. They were described as manufacturing intelligence or production reporting initiatives. SAP MII happened to be the…
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Electronics Manufacturing Before IIoT. Lessons from a Global Rollout
Read more: Electronics Manufacturing Before IIoT. Lessons from a Global RolloutWhen I first stepped onto the shop floor of a global electronics connector manufacturer, the biggest challenge was not the machines. It was fragmentation. Each plant had its own way of working, built over years to support high-volume, high-precision manufacturing…
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Shop Floor Connectivity Lessons from a Titanium Dioxide Plant
Read more: Shop Floor Connectivity Lessons from a Titanium Dioxide PlantLong before “IIoT” became a standard term, manufacturing plants already had a real problem to solve. Data was everywhere on the shop floor, but nowhere at the same time. Control systems knew what was happening second by second. Labs held…
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SAP MII End of Life. What Comes Next for Your Career?
Read more: SAP MII End of Life. What Comes Next for Your Career?When I first started with SAP xMII back in 2005, I never imagined I’d see the day the platform would be sunset. Yet here we are. SAP MII, the tool I built a big part of my career on, is…
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Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0: Evolution or Revolution?
Read more: Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0: Evolution or Revolution?Lately, there’s a lot of talk about Industry 5.0. Some folks say it’s a revolution. Others say it’s just a logical next step after Industry 4.0. I’ve spent the last two decades living through these shifts on plant floors, in…
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Stakeholder Alignment for IIoT: IT, OT, and Quality on the Same Page
Read more: Stakeholder Alignment for IIoT: IT, OT, and Quality on the Same PageGetting IT, OT, and Quality to work together sounds like a reasonable goal. In practice, it’s one of the hardest things I’ve dealt with in more than 20 years in digital manufacturing. Every site, every program, every rollout. The same…