McRock, NBIF in $3M RtTech Deal

Segment Overview: IIoT

RtTech Software is a leader in one of the most exciting sectors in the world.

Yes, it sounds like mere puffery, but the facts of RtTech’s business model bear it out.

The Moncton company is one of the first – if not the first – with a cloud-based application in the Industrial Internet of Things segment, or IIoT as some call it.

This is the growing industrial practice in which companies with large plants, like manufacturers or utilities, use the Internet and sensors to communicate with one another and adjust settings more quickly and precisely than humans could.

McRock Capital Co-Founder Scott MacDonald said at a panel in Ottawa last year that IIoT is creating huge opportunity because it is growing so quickly. There are estimates that the segment will be worth $19 trillion by the end of the decade and that 50 billion devices will be connected to each other.

In an interview Monday, he cited another metric to show how rapidly the segment is growing. When he attended the Cisco Internet of Things World Forum in late 2013, there were 10 billion devices connected to the Internet around the world. By the time he attended the next forum in late 2014, the number had grown by 3 billion.

“It took a long time to get 2.5 billion people connected to the Internet and we saw a 3 billion devices jump on in one year,” said MacDonald.

Luckily, RtTech isn’t the only IIoT company operating in Atlantic Canada. Streamlyne Technologies of Dartmouth and Eigen Industries of Fredericton have both spoken at McRock events in Toronto. And Smart Skin Technologies of Fredericton and Shift Energy of Saint John are in the space as well.

“It’s happening in your area,” said MacDonald. “We’re keeping our eyes open.”