FUTURE TRENDS
The future direction of R&D is in line with current product development. IP is a continued migration, with the cloud and greater connectivity being essential. Component-level breakthroughs will enable faster processing on the edge, reducing network loading. As hardware becomes harder to differentiate on, software will be the benchmark of a company's innovation. “We don't expect any revolutionary new technologies, but rather a honing and smoothening of the current systems, with IP moving even further into lower-price systems,” Rietschel said.
Technology will be amalgamated to make sense in other environments. “The cloud is coming in quick and having a big impact,” Irani said. Video monitoring could check on a loved one in the hospital — from the office, at home or on the road via mobile devices.
SMARTER, FASTER, GREENER
Some companies worked to make power-hungry products more efficient. This is a challenge with processing-intensive devices, such as megapixel cameras or network recording devices. “While other companies where talking about the economic crisis, Dallmeier used this period to prepare the company for the time after the crisis,” Hechtbauer said.
Other companies worked on making their solutions smarter. Hungarian analytics provider Intellio developed intelligent edge cameras and vertical-specific software that are easy to manage. “The new Intellio camera models are able to handle several specific applications, which normally run on a server,” said János Kópházi, MD of Intellio.
The mobile revolution will require additional R&D resources. “It's the next three to four years for the output, but you have to be doing the R&D today to have the products positioned in the market tomorrow,” Nosker said.
As copycat products increase, differentiation lies more in applications than hardware. “What we see happening is that hardware is becoming more of a commodity every day,” Mijwaart said. “The true innovation and one of the only opportunities left to be distinctive is by having better understanding of client needs in specific applications and offer firmware and software that will fully support those needs.”
Ultimately, technology serves as tool to advance human goals. “Today, the differentiation is not in performance any more but in the solution,” Colciago said. “It should not be humans adapting to the technology. We should use technology to understand what the human wants. Because at the end, the human is the master and the technology answers to us.”