Editorial

Editorial

Atheer: Vision at Work

1 min read

Editorial

WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY FOR ENTERPRISE COMES TO ATLANTA

Duke Energy, DHL, GAP, Walmart, GE and Other Top-Name Enterprises Are Coming to Atlanta to Discuss Challenges & Opportunities of Using Wearable Technology in Business WESTCHESTER, N.Y.–BrainXchange – a leading boutique conference organizer – announced the early confirmed speaker lineup for the Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit East, which includes some of the biggest companies and foremost experts in the world. Wearable technology – one of the fastest growing and most exciting sectors in mobile technology – promises to be a game changer for the enterprise, where numerous job roles and tasks in all industries require employees to have access to real-time information in a hands-free, on-the-go fashion. “The enterprise adoption of wearable technology is really beginning to ramp-up. The market is moving from enterprises piloting 20-30 devices to commercially rolling out hundreds of devices.” – Andrew Ferguson, Innovation Director, BrainXchange. The Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit East – being held June 16-17, 2016 at W Downtown in Atlanta, Georgia – is the only event focused exclusively on the use of wearable technology in business and industry. Consisting of real-world case studies and best-practice user examples, the conference looks into how some of the most forward-thinking companies, from across the industry spectrum, […]

3 min read

Editorial

Smart glasses hyped at the Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit, but other devices deserve more attention

Written by Special Guest Blogger Tony Sun, Analyst, Lux Research Lux Research analysts recently attended the Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit East in Atlanta, GA. The conference included about 250 attendees, with presenters and exhibitors focused on the opportunities and challenges of implementing wearable devices in the workplace. The buzz at the conference centered around smart glasses and three main issues facing smart glasses in the workplace today: Attendees’ top interest is how other companies are using smart glasses for augmented reality (AR). Among different form factors, head-worn devices, especially smart glasses, unsurprisingly attracted the most discussion, mentioned in almost every speech, group discussion, and case study. While most use cases mentioned in the conference – like warehousing, employee training, and assembly and installation – were discussed in our report “Better than Google Glass: Finding the Right Smart Glasses for Enterprise,” new use cases are also being developed. For example, Michael Leyva, Product Manager at Epson, said sharing the point of view from a drone for both enterprise and consumer applications has been a key application for the company’s Moverio smart glasses. The need for better ergonomics design is the major feedback from all wearable device adopters. In his keynote speech, […]

3 min read

Editorial

Differentiating Consumer Smart Glass Hype From Enterprise Smart Glass Potential

Differentiating Consumer Smart Glass Hype From Enterprise Smart Glass Potential… Google Leads in One of These Categories Written by Special Guest Blogger Tony Sun, Lux Research Smart glasses launched to much fanfare but commensurate disappointment with Google’s initial consumer-focused product line, but, like many such initial products with glitches, the seeds were sown for other developers and end-users to connect and innovate. Enter the enterprises looking for new tools that can improve productivity, a domain in which smart glasses have received significant buzz recently. The devices’ unique form factors and hands-free controls attracted interest from many different industries, ranging from automotive and construction to medical and retail. This end-user interest together with the entrance of a plethora of device developers has created a major battlefield for smart glasses with numerous pilot projects being pursued. The question is, what glasses are the best fit for what enterprise use cases? By analyzing more than 70 enterprise use cases, we found that these pilot programs can all be boiled down to three core functions. Those for accessing information enable users to pull information like checklists, product info, and notifications from various sources and view it in the head-mounted display (HMD). Sometimes, the visualized […]

4 min read

Editorial

Wearables in Healthcare: Activity Trackers May Be Useful After All

Written by Special Guest Blogger Milos Todorovic, Analyst, Lux Research One of the pervasive topics at the inaugural Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit held in Houston, TX was the medical professionals’ increasing embrace of Google Glass and similar products as tools to optimize their own workflows. One of the topics that did not receive as much attention was the use of wearables by patients and the willingness of doctors to incorporate data from such devices into their decision making processes. General sentiment is that the future uses of wearables will span a spectrum of applications from longer-term, continuous monitoring of vitals, both in clinical settings and at home – enabled by devices like Vital Connect’s patch – to performing IVD tests on bodily fluids with future devices like Electrozyme’s printed biosensor strips. All of these applications have been discussed in the industry circles for years, yet the use of wearables for patient monitoring and diagnostics has caught very little traction. However, what caught our attention was the mention of standard activity trackers as tools doctors might use to monitor patients’ activity levels pre- and post-surgery. Patients are often instructed to follow specific exercise regimes to lose weight before surgeries and to […]

3 min read

Editorial

Are you a #Mawearick? EWTS 2015

Andrew Ferguson, Dr. Rafael Grossman, Dr. Homero Rivas and Melissa Saelzer has a discuss about wearables, their first experience using these devices and their application in the industry.

1 min read

Editorial

AREA Webinar: Meet the AREA, its Committees, Programs and Members

The AR for Enterprise Alliance is the only global non-profit, member-driven organization dedicated to widespread adoption of interoperable AR-enabled enterprise systems. Whether you are getting started with enterprise Augmented Reality or a widely recognized expert in the field, you can benefit from and contribute to the AR for Enterprise Alliance.

1 min read

Editorial

Major Players in Enterprise Wearables: Ubimax

Today, we will hear from Ubimax. We sent over some questions to Ubimax. Check out their answers below! BrainXchange (Q): Can you provide us with some background on Ubimax? What kind of company is Ubimax and what products, services, or expertise does Ubimax offer? Ubimax (A): Ubimax is a leading Wearable Computing and Augmented Reality solution provider. We supply enterprises with fully integrated solutions along the industrial value chain, ranging from logistics and productions to maintenance and field service. Currently we offer a suite of four ready-to-deploy products: xPick, xMake, xInspect, and xAssist. Our team has more than 10 years of experience in the fields of Wearable Computing and Augmented Reality technology. Our CEO and co-founder, Dr. Hendrik Witt, who spoke at last week’s EWTS ’15, is really a Wearable Computing pioneer with more than 15 years of experiences with smart glasses, sensors and other wearable tech. He is a former PhD. student of Prof. Thad E. Starner, one of the leading experts in the world and founders of the wearable computing paradigm back at his time at MIT. BrainXchange: What is Ubimax doing with wearable technology? How is Ubimax contributing to bringing wearables into the enterprise? Ubimax: Ubimax is […]

3 min read

Editorial

Major Players in Enterprise Wearables: AMA

Today, we will hear from Advanced Medical Applications or AMA. We sent over some questions to AMA. Check out their answers below! BrainXchange (Q): Can you provide us with some background on AMA? What kind of company is AMA and what products, services, or expertise does AMA offer? AMA (A): AMA has been working in the mobile applications business for the last 11 years. We have always been up on the latest technologies thanks to our great partnerships with handset and chipsets manufacturers. When entering the Google Glass program, we became thrilled with the business potential of Glass and thus created a new division of the company to fully focus on it, but of course maintaining the core elements of our company DNA: user experience, high quality, and portability. BrainXchange: What is AMA doing with wearable technology? How is AMA contributing to the wearable revolution in the enterprise? AMA: AMA entered the wearable revolution first with smart watches (we published a couple of apps on Tizen and Android Wear), but we really made a big shift with Google Glass. It was great, as many industrial professionals and doctors came to us with different problem areas to address or solve using […]

3 min read

Editorial

Major Players in Enterprise Wearables: Interview with Rochester Optical

Today, we will hear from Rochester Optical, a company whose Smart Solutions initiatives have taken the wearable world by storm and enabled smart glasses to infiltrate a wide range of industries. We sent over some questions to Rochester. Check out their answers below! BrainXchange (Q): Can you provide us with some background on Rochester Optical? What kind of company is Rochester and what products, services, or expertise does Rochester offer? Rochester (A): Rochester Optical is not your standard optical company. We have a long history of traditional frame and lens manufacturing for the military, wholesale and retail markets; but we are also forging a new frontier by engineering optical products designed specifically for smart glasses. We’re applying our optical expertise to the user-experience problems smart glasses pose, and we’re coming up with innovative products and solutions. BrainXchange: What is Rochester doing with wearable technology? How is Rochester contributing to bringing wearables into the enterprise? Rochester: We entered the wearable space when Google Glass launched their Explorer program. By looking at the device from an optical standpoint, we identified design deficiencies in terms of style, comfort, and visual acuity. Almost instantly, our smart product strategy was born; and we started rapid […]

5 min read

Editorial

Adopting the Wearables Design Mindset

Written by Special Guest Blogger Scott McCormick, Director of Client Relations, Float Mobile Learning It can be difficult to pinpoint the department in charge of delivering performance support solutions in Big Enterprise these days. Is it HR or IT? Does it fall on the shoulders of L&D or does Marketing drive the effort? Is it a combination of these different departments or (shudder) all of the above? Management and Legal will be sniffing around, too, once it is learned what type of information is being distributed and how. The point is, there is someone, or better yet, a group of people who are trying to determine the best way to deliver vital on-demand information to a target audience within the company. And that’s a crucial role as business processes get leaner and faster and involve fewer people to get the same amount of work done. To add to those pressures, new technologies are appearing in the marketplace seemingly on a daily basis. Enterprises who may just be getting the hang of mobile deliverables on smartphones and tablets are now seeing a growing variety of wearables solutions that could eclipse the mobile devices and provide a more effective user experience. Some […]

5 min read

Editorial

The Coming Crack-Up in the Wearable Electronics Market

Written by Special Guest Blogger Jon Melnick, Senior Analyst, Lux Research When we look back eight years to the introduction of the iPhone, it is easy to see the disruption smartphones caused; from transportation to on-demand services to social media. The big question today is what (if any) disruption will wearables cause? Improved healthcare? Quantified self? Connecting with customers? Gathering consumer data? Making safer and more efficient employees? Wearable electronics have come a long way since their less-than-noble origins as a way to beat the house at roulette. However, today’s wearable electronics landscape consists of a huge amount of disjointed activity as literally hundreds of devices litter the market. Wearable developers are placing their bets in specific areas, and our survey of over 450 wearable devices showed that consumer communication and consumer health garner the most development attention. While these larger market trends emerge with promise and a robust field of competitors, companies seek differentiated niches. Take, for example, HP’s wearables play. Initially designed to provide remote technical support to industrial printer customers, HP had added smart glasses to its MyRoom platform to enable remote employees to quickly engage with subject matter experts (see Figure 1). For example, EMTs can […]

2 min read