Armonk, New York, Sept. 3, 2015: IBM today announced an expansion of its Internet of Things (IoT) platform – called IBM IoT Foundation – through an integration with ARM providing out-of-the-box connectivity with ‘ARM mbed-enabled’ devices to analytics services. This collaboration, said the company, would allow vast quantities of data from devices such as industrial appliances, weather sensors and wearable monitoring devices to be gathered, analysed and acted upon.
IBM also announced the first in a series of IBM Cloud-based, industry-specific IoT services with IoT for electronics. The service would enable electronics manufacturers to gather data from individual sensors that could then be combined with other data for real time analysis.
The IBM IoT Foundation was a platform upon which a family of fully managed, Cloud-hosted offerings on the SoftLayer Infrastructure was built. The IoT Foundation included:
- Analytics tools capable of dealing with large quantities of fast-moving data
- Access to IBM Bluemix, IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service, that was capable of handling the immense flow of data and provide anytime access for decision makers
- Security systems capable of helping organizations protect IoT data as rigorously as they do their own confidential financial, IP and strategy information
“Deploying IoT technology has to be easy, secure and scalable for it to feel like a natural extension of a company’s business,” explained Krisztian Flautner, General Manager, IoT Business, ARM. “By collaborating with IBM, we will deliver the first unified chip-to-cloud, enterprise-class IoT platform. This will empower companies of any size with a productivity tool that can readily transform how they operate, and the services they can offer.”
The integration between IBM and ARM will allow products powered by ARM mbed-enabled chips to automatically register with the IBM IoT Foundation, and connect with IBM analytics services. This unified the ARM mbed IoT Device Platform and the IBM IoT Foundation at a point where information gathered from deployed sensors in any connected device is delivered to the Cloud for analysis. The IoT connection also enabled delivery of actionable events to control equipment or provide users with alerts or other information. An example was the triggering of an alarm message on a washing machine to ask the owner to confirm a breakdown engineer appointment if a fault was detected.
This integration would help clients improve engagement, accelerate innovation and enhance operations through connected devices and analysis of the data, said IBM.
Electronics manufacturers were already adopting IBM’s Cloud services to connect everything from dishwashers to Smart TVs to pro audio equipment. “By using IBM IoT services, we are able to real time manage and control Smart TV content in over 30 countries. This provides us the opportunity to continuously balance costs with increased customer experience. Lastly, we have eliminated the need to set up hardware within traditional IT infrastructure – allowing a drastic reduction in provisioning time,” said Marc Harmsen, Global Marketing Lead and Product Manager EMEA Philips Television at TP Vision.
“Since 2008, IBM has helped thousands of customers embrace the Internet of Things — to help cities become smarter, hospitals to transform patient care and financial institutions to improve risk management,” said Pat Toole, General Manager, Internet of Things, IBM. “The IoT is now at an inflection point and it needs the Big Data expertise of IBM and little data expertise of ARM to ensure it reaches its global potential.”
Image Credit: IBM