VMware is making a deeper push into the Internet of things, joining an industry standards group and partnering with another vendor to help organizations more easily manage and secure connected smart devices.
At the IoT World Forum this week, the virtualization technology giant announced that it has joined the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), one of several industry groups that have launched over the past year that are working to develop standards around the Internet of things (IoT).
The IIC was launched in March by Intel, Cisco Systems, IBM, General Electric and A&T, and now has a membership of almost 90. The group was formed to help accelerate the growth of the IoT through such efforts as pushing application development, creating open forums through which developers can communicate, and developing reference architectures, case studies, best practices and standards requirements to make deploying connected devices easier.
Several other industry groups pushing for IoT standards have cropped up over the past year, including the AllSeen Alliance, which is creating a framework around the AllJoyn code; the Thread Group, which is leveraging the Thread specification to drive interoperability among connected devices in the home; and the Open Interconnect Consortium, which is working on creating connectivity requirements and reportedly has lost Broadcom as a member.
The IIC was the best fit for VMware, according to Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager of end-user computing at the tech company.
“We chose to join the IIC because of its tenacious goal to accelerate IoT in the workplace, educate the industry on standards and deliver best practices for IoT,” Poonen said in a statement.
VMware has been a long been a proponent of the Internet of things. In a guest blog on the VentureBeat site in June, Poonen said the potential for businesses users is significant.
“Today we are implementing technology that connects traditional devices such as laptops, tablets and mobile devices for one seamless experience that enables employees to work at the speed of life,” he wrote. “Much in the way you can start a Netflix movie on your tablet and finish it on your smart TV, we have created the same seamless experience for your work life across devices. Now imagine some of the ways the Internet of things might work in the enterprise.”
In its partnership with Jasper, which offers a turnkey cloud-based platform for the IoT that organizations can use to deploy more connected businesses, VMware will combine its AirWatch enterprise mobile management product with Jasper’s Control Center service platform. AirWatch is designed to enable businesses to more easily deploy, manage and secure such devices as smartphones, tablets and notebooks on multiple mobile platforms and operating systems, according to VMware officials.
The combination of the technologies from VMware and Jasper will give organizations better management and control of their connected enterprise devices and make smarter businesses decisions. That will become increasingly important as the numbers of connected devices—from tablets and smartphones to industrial systems, cars and various sensors—grow into the tens of billions.
“The combination of widespread connectivity, lower-cost sensors, and industry standards creates the conditions for the enterprise to adopt and benefit from IoT at scale,” Poonen said.
The companies will begin rolling out products from the partnership next year, officials said.