Today, it’s the Internet of Things (IoT) -- Tomorrow it will be the Internet of Analytics-Enabled... [+] Secure Automated Wearable Things (IoA-EASWT) Image credit: Samsung There’s a race on to build and enable the Internet of Things, obviously. But what matters most, the platforms or the products? You would be forgiven for thinking that it’s the products i.e. the Apple Watch is obviously very sexy and the Fitbit has formed an essential introduction for many of us to the concept of so-called ‘wearables’. But aren’t the platforms unpinning and connecting these technologies really the crucial factor? Samsung Electronics is a good example of a company doing both i.e. the firm manufactures devices from smartphones to laptops, but it also works quite directly at the software end of the equation. The firm has this week announced its Tizen Software Development Kit (SDK) for its newly released Samsung Gear S2 wearable device. According to a Samsung statement released this week, “Developers can create enhanced standalone Samsung Gear S2 apps with network, call and location-based APIs, with the freedom to connect to 3G networks without a smartphone. Software developers can also build both web and [device] native apps with the new SDK. Tizen Native APIs enable them to build lightweight apps with EFL (Enlightenment Foundation Libraries).” NOTE: In the spirit of the new open age, the firm has confirmed support for Android phones, including (but not limited to) Samsung models. So it’s a kind of chicken and egg situation, we need to build the devices, yes -- but we also need to: So it starts to become clearer, the platform and how it works with our devices is fundamental to the success of the products. In this regard it’s worth including IBM in this conversation. Occasionally mocked as the big old elephant of the IT industry, as you can read in the piece linked here by Janakiram MSV, IBM has had a whole lot of software going on pretty much since Lou Gerstner stepped in back in the early 1990s (if not before anyway). As discussed already on Forbes by Federico Guerrini, IBM has expanded its own IoT software platform this month (known as the IBM IoT Foundation, it’s a corporate naming thing, please don’t make fun) with a tighter integration with British technical engineering form ARM. IBM seeks to provide what it calls ‘out-of-the-box connectivity (it’s a PR naming thing, please don’t make fun) with ARM mbed-enabled devices to analytics services. What does ACTUALLY it do? According to IBM, this fusion will allow huge quantities of data from devices such as industrial appliances, weather sensors and wearable monitoring devices to be gathered, analyzed and acted upon. “Since 2008, IBM has helped thousands of customers embrace the Internet of Things -- to help cities become smarter, hospitals to transform patient care and financial institutions to improve risk management," said Pat Toole, general manager, Internet of Things, IBM. " The IBM IoT Foundation is a platform upon which a family of fully managed, cloud-hosted offerings on the SoftLayer Infrastructure is built." IBM also announced what it says is the first in a series of cloud-based industry-specific IoT services with IoT for Electronics. The service is hoped to enable electronics manufacturers to gather data from individual sensors that can be combined with other data for real-time analysis. What the IoT needs next… Yes vendors will now say that the IoT is at an inflexion point, but it probably always will be -- just like your smartphone still is, just like your laptop device operating system still is (remember Microsoft Windows?), just like your next-generation of touch and ‘gesture-based’ technology that you’re not even really using yet is. What does matter is the degree to which we recognize just how much the Internet of Things (IoT) platform-level technologies matter. We need analytics tools capable of dealing with large quantities of fast-moving data, we need cloud Platform-as-a-Service functionality that is capable of handling the immense flow of data and provide anytime access for decision makers (clue: this is what IBM Bluemix is for) -- and we need security systems capable of helping organizations protect IoT data as rigorously as they do their own confidential financial, IP and strategy information (this is in the IBM pie as well). The integration between IBM and ARM will allow products powered by ARM mbed-enabled chips to automatically register with the IBM IoT Foundation and connect with IBM analytics services. “This unifies the ARM mbed IoT Device Platform and the IBM IoT Foundation at the point where information gathered from deployed sensors in any connected device is delivered to the cloud for analysis. The IoT connection also enables delivery of actionable events to control equipment or provide users with alerts or other information. For example, 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,” said IBM, in a press statement. The IoT tomorrow will be called… Today, it’s the Internet of Things (IoT) -- tomorrow it will be the Internet of Analytics-Enabled Secure Automated Wearable Things (IoA-EASWT).
Adrian Bridgewater, writing for Forbes explains how devices are not the only part of the IoT that needs focus. The writer talks about the need for device to network connecting and device management control platforms.