IBM is putting billions of dollars into creating a standalone IoT division
IBM has announced a slew of Internet of Things solutions following a recent pledge to pump £2bn into a series of IoT and cloud initiatives, including the creation of a standalone IoT division.
The company pulled the curtain back on two vertically-focused IoT solutions including IBM Aviation Maintenance, which is designed to optimise the availability and extend the life of critical aviation components; and IBM Product Line Engineering (PLE), a solution to help engineers more efficiently customise product designs for specific markets
It also reaffirmed plans to carve out a section in Bluemix for specialist IoT services (IoT Zone), and announced a number of new IoT-focused cloud services available on the platform: an asset management solution to increase visibility of the condition of assets; a managed continuous engineering platform to help large industrial manufacturing organisations speed up IoT app development, and Workbench, a service for modelling the design and impact of IoT systems.
“The IoT is generating massive amounts of data – data from mobile phones, automobiles, appliances and industrial appliances – that can be captured, analyzed and transformed into actionable insights, in a secure manner,” said Chris O’Connor, general manager, offerings, IBM Internet of Things.
“IBM is helping innovators who design and produce the next generation of connected devices and those who operate and maintain those devices, deal with the increasing complexity of creating products and solutions quickly to meet the needs of consumers,” O’Connor said.
The company also announced a partnership with Texas Instruments (TI) to develop a cloud-based provisioning and lifecycle management service for IoT devices, part of IBM’s plan to ink more IoT-focused strategic partnerships.
“Cloud connectivity and cloud services are fundamental to the IoT, but there are barriers to adoption especially for industrial applications such as manufacturing, building automation and energy management,” said Avner Goren, general manager of strategic marketing, Embedded Processing, Texas Instruments.
“By working with IBM to help secure device identity, provisioning and lifecycle management, we have created a foundation for IoT adoption to reach its full potential through better managed services across easy-to-use connectivity solutions,” Goren said.
The 2nd annual Internet of Things World event to be held in San Francisco in May is due to address some of the challenges ahead of the industry in terms of IoT. Sign up here.
