Adding some detail to its plan to invest $3 billion over the next four years to establish a new Internet of Things (IoT) unit, IBM announced new software and services to enable an ecosystem of partners and customers to build and manage the connected products and systems at the heart of the IoT.
At the end of March, IBM announced the establishment of a new IoT business unit where more than 2,000 IBM consultants, researchers and developers will support the new initiative and help enterprise clients gain new insights. Today IBM added new software and services, including IBM IoT Industry Solutions, the IBM IoT Cloud Open Platform and Bluemix IoT Zone, and the IBM IoT Ecosystem.
“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 of offerings for IBM Internet of Things, in a statement. “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.”
IBM is offering two new IoT industry solutions. The first is IBM Aviation Maintenance to optimize the availability and extend the life of complex, safety- critical aviation components. The second, IBM Product Line Engineering (PLE) has capabilities to help engineers more efficiently customize product designs for specific markets.
The IBM Aviation Maintenance solution will enable commercial and government aviation organizations to more effectively schedule and manage complex maintenance tasks, and reduce the time to return expensive components to productive use, IBM said.
It builds on the IBM Maximo Asset Management solution, and adds new capability for hardware and software configuration management, work scheduling, and management of depreciation and warranty costs for components shared among service organizations. The new software can be used with other IBM Maximo offerings.
The IBM PLE software enables companies to more efficiently customize product designs for specific markets without encountering the exponential design complexity typically associated with this challenge, the company said.
Companies deploying PLE have been able to significantly increase their number of product variations (while reducing associated design expense), meeting ever- increasing consumer demands for individualized product experiences. IBM said the new capabilities can help reduce development costs by as much as 80 percent. The new IBM PLE will be available in the second quarter of this year. Early versions of these capabilities are available in public beta now here.
The IBM IoT Cloud Open Platform and Bluemix IoT Zone feature three new IBM IoT Cloud solutions and eight new I0T consulting services. The features include a real-time asset management offering, managed continuous engineering capabilities that help speed the development of IoT products and devices by enabling real-time feedback to engineers, and a new IoT Workbench service for modeling the design and impact of IoT systems.
IBM Managed CE for the IoT, delivered as a private single tenant environment, enables engineers to access continuous engineering capabilities from the cloud. Organizations can accumulate and access data from all deployed products and use that data to quickly change engineering directions and habits based on insights received from analysis. The offering includes IBM Continuous Engineering components, IBM MessageSight and IBM Bluemix running Hadoop services. IBM partner CloudOne provides management services, including virtual private clouds, flexible licensing management and visualization, performance monitoring, support, daily backups, upgrades, patching, and more.
The new IBM IoT Workbench (IoTWB) is designed to boost productivity and insight by allowing engineers to rapidly design, verify, test and deploy end-to-end IoT applications in a cloud-based environment. Based on Bluemix, IoTWB can take advantage of other services to help engineers better understand how their designs are performing once they are delivered to end users.
IBM Launches New Software, Services, Ecosystem
IBM said its eight new IoT consulting services provide users with an on-ramp to get started with IoT and navigate through key aspects in implementing IoT solutions with asset management. The consulting services are based on the capabilities within the Bluemix IoT Zone and are modular to provide clients with the flexibility to select the specific areas where they require assistance.
IBM’s new IoT consulting services are as follows:
· IBM IoT On-Ramp Navigator to help companies discover opportunities within their business for an IoT strategy.
· IBM IoT Art of the Possible POC to help design and implement a data simulation solution for potential enterprise projects.
· IBM IoT Device Security Plan Navigator to design and implement a security solution for their devices.
· IBM IoT Device Implementation Services to design and implement a solution to securely integrate their devices with IBM’s IoT Foundation.
· IBM IoT Visualization Services to design and implement a visualization dashboard to view the condition of users’ monitored assets and critical devices within the enterprise.
· IBM IoT Analytics Services to design and implement an IoT Analytics to understand what is happening within their device-monitored enterprise.
· IBM IoT Notification Automation Services to design and implement automated notification via e-mail, SMS and phone based on business rules set for their incoming device data.
· IBM IoT Asset Integration Services to design and implement a solution that brings their device and asset data together to automatically generate work orders against monitored assets when business rules determine that critical thresholds have been exceeded.
In addition, IBM is delivering the IBM IoT Ecosystem, a new collaboration with Texas Instruments (TI) to develop a secure, cloud-hosted provisioning and lifecycle management service for IoT devices.
IBM and TI are collaborating to develop IBM’s secure, cloud-hosted provisioning and lifecycle management service for IoT devices. Through its collaboration with TI, IBM will create a Secure Registry Service that will provide trust and authentication practices and protocol across the value chain – from silicon embedded in devices and products to businesses and homes.
The IBM Cloud-hosted service will work with a silicon token from which a device can have its identity more securely managed. The collaboration will target the processes involved in provisioning, activating, registering, de-registering and eventually retiring IoT assets. “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 for Embedded Processing at Texas Instruments, in a statement. “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.”
IBM and TI plan to make the provisioning life cycle management service available to all cloud service providers and all silicon vendors. IBM and TI will make the APIs public and available for use by other IoT cloud service providers and other silicon vendors.
