IBM and chip manufacturer ARM have teamed up to develop an internet of things (IoT) platform geared heavily towards a system where huge amounts of data, both commercial and industrial, could be collated and analysed.
Called the IBM IoT Foundation, the data analytics platform will use devices enabled with ARM’s mbed chip – ranging from weather sensors to wearables – and crunch the numbers for industrial applications.
According to IBM, the service will specifically allow electronics manufacturers to gather data from individual sensors that can then be combined with other data for real-time analysis.
In essence, this will allow any company using an ARM mbed chip in their device to register with the IBM IoT Foundation, and connect with IBM analytics services in the same way that ARM’s own IoT platform had before.
Giving an example, IBM say the new expanded platform could allow for the triggering of an alarm message on a washing machine to ask the owner to confirm a breakdown engineer appointment if a fault is detected.
IBM also announced IoT for Electronics, a cloud infrastructure for this data to be hosted on.
The vast amounts of data it hopes to harvest will be stored on IBM’s SoftLayer cloud service while being processed by the company’s Access to IBM platform-as-a-service (PPaS), Bluemix, capable of handling the large amounts of accessible data.
Speaking of the IBM IoT Foundation, IBM’s general manager for IoT, Pat Toole, said: “Since 2008, IBM has helped thousands of customers embrace IoT – to help cities become smarter, hospitals to transform patient care and financial institutions to improve risk management.
“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.”
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IoT image via Shutterstock
