Armonk, New York, March 31, 2015: IBM today announced that it would invest US $3 billion over the next four years to establish a new Internet of Things (IoT) unit, and that it was building a Cloud-based open platform designed to help clients and ecosystem partners build IoT solutions. IBM has already done some pioneering work in the IoT domain with its Smarter Planet and Smarter Cities, based on practical applications of IoT in the enterprise.
Making the announcement on its Website, IBM said with new industry-specific Cloud data services and developer tools, it would build on that expertise to “help clients and partners integrate data from an unprecedented number of IoT and traditional sources.” These resources, it said, would be made available on an open platform to provide manufacturers with the ability to design and produce a new generation of connected devices that were better optimised for the IoT, and to help business leaders across industries create systems that better fuse enterprise and IoT data to inform decision-making.
“Our knowledge of the world grows with every connected sensor and device, but too often we are not acting on it, even when we know we can ensure a better result,” said Bob Picciano, senior Vice President, IBM Analytics. “IBM will enable clients and industry partners apply IoT data to build solutions based on an open platform. This is a major focus of investment for IBM because it’s a rich and broad-based opportunity where innovation matters.”
IBM has estimated that 90 percent of all data generated by devices such as smartphones, Tablets, connected vehicles and appliances was never analysed or acted on. As much as 60 percent of this data began to lose value within milliseconds of being generated. To address this challenge, IBM was offering:
IBM IoT Cloud Open Platform for Industries: To provide new analytics services that clients, partners and IBM will use to design and deliver vertical industry IoT solutions.
IBM Bluemix IoT Zone: New IoT services as part of IBM’s Bluemix platform-as-a-service will enable developers to easily integrate IoT data into Cloud-based development and deployment of IoT apps. Developers will be able to enrich existing business applications – such as enterprise asset management, facilities management, and software engineering design tools – by infusing more real-time data and embedded analytics to further automate and optimise mission-critical IoT processes.
Further, IBM’s capabilities were illustrated in a new global strategic alliance announced today with The Weather Company through WSI, its global B2B division. WSI’s forecasting system ingests and processes data from thousands of sources, resulting in approximately 2.2 billion unique forecast points worldwide, and averages more than 10 billion forecasts a day on active weather days. The IoT and Cloud computing allow for collection of data from more than 100,000 weather sensors and aircraft, millions of smartphones, buildings and even moving vehicles. The two companies will help industries utilise their understanding of weather on business outcomes and take action systemically to optimise those parts of their businesses.
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Image Credit: IBM
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