How to Understand if Jabir’s SAP IoT is Really IoT?

ByShaun Snapp

Executive Summary

  • The Glossy Story of Jabil and IoT
  • Is Connecting to a Printer IoT?
  • What is the Definition of IoT Again?

Introduction

SAP has been very aggressively pushing Leonardo. We have previously questioned whether SAP really has much IoT business in the article Why Leonardo Seems to Fake. Recently we found this supposed success story of IoT for the SAP customer Jabil. In this article, we review this case study.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

  • This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem. 
  • Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers. 

Jabil’s “SAP IoT”

The following video explains what Jabil did with SAP’s IoT solution/platform, etc..

This article has been removed from YouTube by SAP

Is Connecting to a Printer IoT?

The video tends to jump around to different topics and repeatedly uses the term digital transformation. However, the only part of the video that explains what was done is found in the following sentence.

Code for a 3d printed appliance can be transmitted in seconds across the world. Manufacturing can begin in minutes.

SAP has a long-term pattern of using terms inaccurately. Our observation is that every time SAP does this, it is a clue to a misrepresentation of some type. 

What is the Definition of IoT Again?

So now is probably a good time to discuss the definition of IoT.

The Internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity which enables these objects to connect and exchange data.[1][2][3] Each thing is uniquely identifiable through its embedded computing system but is able to inter-operate within the existing Internet infrastructure.

Computer-based printing, or specifically connecting a computer to a printer, preceded IoT by many decades. In fact, this is the first IoT case study we have ever read that came down to connecting a printer to a network. One might say this isn’t IoT at all.

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Conclusion

It seems that the point of this video and case study is to obtain an IoT qualification without the viewer noticing that this is not IoT.