While they don’t look like traditional industrial settings, outdoor sporting venues face similar harsh, environmental conditions to utility and manufacturing sites. The similarities don’t end there. The communication in these stadiums is also considered mission-critical – ensuring patrons not only have an enjoyable experience during the game, but that they enter the arena in a systematic, timely and safe manner.

As more factory machines are connected through the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), companies could soon run into a major problem. You’ve probably felt this shift: the promise of improved productivity from these connected machines producing more data requires additional power and space on your factory floor.

Wireless technology is a part of daily life. Odds are, you’re reading this very blog post on a smartphone, laptop or tablet connected to Wi-Fi, right? Before that, you likely checked your email, favorite news sites or other sources of information without giving a second thought. It’s true, the days of landlines and DSL have largely disappeared from our daily lives.

Industrial control systems (ICS) are the workhorses of our physical world, and becoming more internet-connected, more virtualized in many cases, and more remotely accessible by the day. Gartner Research indicates 5.5 million devices were added per day in 2016, a pace that leads to an estimated 21+ billion internet-connected “things” running our world by 2020.

The transportation industry, unlike many other mission-critical industrial operations, has the unique position of directly engaging with its customers (the passengers) and keeping them happy and safe. Any delays or downtime in a transportation system not only lead to lost revenue, but a trickle-down effect of annoyed travellers, who can choose to spend their transportation revenues somewhere else.