Fujitsu Offers Cloud Platform for IoT Development

Fujitsu officials are looking to grow the tech vendor’s role in the nascent Internet of things by creating a cloud-based platform developers can use to build and test their IoT innovations.

Fujitsu’s Human-Centric IoT platform, introduced Nov. 13, will give customers and business partners access to a broad range of the company’s technologies—from hardware and software to middleware, networks and sensors—to use as a test bed for their proposed products. In addition, vendors will be able to leverage the platform to test and verify their products.

Fujitsu also will use the platform to validate its own technologies.

Users will get six months of free use of the platform via its cloud environment to run proof-of-concepts, validations and other tests, according to Fujitsu officials. In addition, the company will create an ecosystem around the platform that customers will be able to leverage to get their businesses off the ground. Fujitsu will help grow the ecosystem by taking advantage of what officials learn from the initiative by creating reference models and standardized architectures and by pushing for greater interoperability with the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC).

Once a product is validated, the tech vendor will give the user support in getting the product to market, officials said. In addition, Fujitsu will help customers establish a business model and promote any jointly created businesses.

Company officials said Fujitsu has garnered broad support for the initiative, pointing to testimonials from the likes of Cisco Systems and Intel, and expects to validate business with more than 100 enterprise customers over the next year.

Fujitsu is highlighting some technologies developed in the company’s labs that will help create products that need to address requirements needed for the IoT, including the ability to process huge amounts of data in real time and to ensure the security of the data, devices and sensors. For example, system performance optimization and real-time sensing technologies are available.

In addition, Fujitsu includes security technology that keeps confidential data that could be used to identify individuals, even as that data is analyzed.