Sprint and Ericsson Reveal Ground Breaking IoT-Dedicated Core and Operating System

Two global communications services giants, Sprint and Ericsson, have announced a global relationship to build a distributed and virtualized core network dedicated specifically to IoT (Internet of Things), in addition to a world-class IoT operating system. This new environment, which is purpose-built for the future of IoT, is designed to create an optimal flow of device data, enabling immediate, actionable intelligence at the network edge for end users and enterprises.

The global Sprint IoT platform is set to be presented at a press conference at Mobile World Congress Americas in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 12 at 10:30 a.m. (location: south hall, room 305).

“We are combining our IoT strategy with Ericsson’s expertise to build a platform primed for the most demanding applications like artificial intelligence, edge computing, robotics, autonomous vehicles and more with ultra-low-latency, the highest availability and an unmatched level of security at the chip level,” said Ivo Rook, senior vice president of IoT for Sprint. “This is a network built for software and it’s ready for 5G. Our IoT platform is for those companies, large and small, that are creating the immediate economy."

“Sprint is a pioneer in IoT and we are excited to work together to create a truly disruptive IoT business,” said Asa Tamsons, senior vice president and head of business area technology & emerging business, Ericsson. “Sprint will be one of the first to market with a distributed core network and operating system built especially for IoT and powered by Ericsson’s IoT Accelerator platform Our goal is to make it easy for Sprint and their customers to access and use connected intelligence, enabling instant and actionable insights for a better customer experience and maximum value."

Sprint + Ericsson: An Optimal Operating Environment for IoT

The two companies are disrupting the IoT world, creating an environment that is prepared for a future where society and business will be even more connected.

The Core Network:

• Dedicated to help provide: low latency and highest availability


• Distributed and virtualized: reduces distance between the device generating the data and the IoT application processing it; nodes are distributed right to the enterprise premise, if necessary, to support specific security, privacy and latency requirements.

The IoT OS:

• Connectivity management and Device management
  
  
  
  • Capabilities enable simplified inbound and outbound activity for device connectivity.
  
  
  • Configuration and updates of firmware and software are managed for each device. All data is managed securely with world-class security on the chip level.
  
  
  • The IoT OS provides full subscription lifecycle management and monitoring of billing and usage data.
  
  
  
  


• Data management:
  
  
  
  • Capability to ingest enormous amounts of data while delivering immediate intelligence on that data.
  
  
  
  


• Managed services:
  
  
  
  • Service assurance for all IoT elements and enterprise locations, including network operations center monitoring, service resource fulfillment, cloud orchestration management and application management.
  
  
  
  

Cisco Launches IoT Operations Platform To Save Your IoT Project From An Early Death

Whenever a new technology comes into existence, it brings with itself a plethora of promise and excitement, with companies jumping right on the wagon to kick off pilot projects for the same. However, in a recent survey done by US tech giant Cisco, it was revealed almost 75 per cent of these projects end up failing (Read Here).

In order to address this early failure rate in enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, Cisco has announced a new Cisco IoT Operations Platform that will be offering tools and features to improve their success. According to a blogpost published by Cisco recently, the platform will be addressing connection management, Fog Computing, device control, and data delivery, and will come integrated with Cisco security.

Announced at the recent held IoT World Forum event in London, the Cisco IoT Operations Platform is expected to be available later this year.

According to Cisco, there are three main components to the new platform:

1) Connection Management at Scale: With the new platform, Cisco plans to manage the huge numbers of IoT devices that are coming online today. Since the company is considered a leader in connection management, and is already working with some of the biggest names in the industry, Cisco is most likely to deliver this without any glitch. The new tools will allow the users to maintain huge fleets of connected devices from unified applications.

2) Fog Computing: Cisco gave birth to Fog Computing years ago. Since then, it has been slogging on bringing computing closer to the action, to put data to work for businesses where it can have the biggest impact. With Fog Computing, the Cisco IoT Operations Platform plans to ensures that data processing and device control takes place at the right place for each job, especially as the needs of jobs changes in real-time.

3) Data Delivery: According to Cisco, once the platform is successfully able to provide their customers with a full control of their networks of devices, it is then going to help them collect, collate, and act on the data being generated by the systems. The platform's scalable tools for filtering and distribution will work towards ensuring that right data streams end up going to the right networks, data stores, applications and people.

Cisco is building the three components upon a strong foundation of security through Cisco’s Threat Defense solution. In order to come up with the platform, Cisco extensively looked at how it could better integrate the communications between machines and humans into environments.

According to Cisco, with the current tools, there isn't enough technical talent in the industry to take most of the IoT projects from prototype to production stage. The tech giant also states that a majority of its customer have informed them that without new and improved tools that address these business issues, projects will continue to fail. Hence, Cisco decided to come up with a coherent set of tools in the Cisco IoT Operations Platform.

What is encouraging is the fact that even with a high 75 per cent failure rate, firms are still interested in investing their time and money in IoT projects. According to 64 per cent of the companies surveyed by Cisco, the lessons that they have learned from their stalled or failed IoT initiatives have in fact helped them in accelerating their organisation’s investment in IoT.

The global installed base of IoT endpoints is expected to grow from 14.9 billion at the end of 2016 to more than a whopping 82 billion by the year 2025, according to statistics made available by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Cisco Launches IoT Operations Platform To Save Your IoT Project From An Early Death

Whenever a new technology comes into existence, it brings with itself a plethora of promise and excitement, with companies jumping right on the wagon to kick off pilot projects for the same. However, in a recent survey done by US tech giant Cisco, it was revealed almost 75 per cent of these projects end up failing (Read Here).

In order to address this early failure rate in enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, Cisco has announced a new Cisco IoT Operations Platform that will be offering tools and features to improve their success. According to a blogpost published by Cisco recently, the platform will be addressing connection management, Fog Computing, device control, and data delivery, and will come integrated with Cisco security.

Announced at the recent held IoT World Forum event in London, the Cisco IoT Operations Platform is expected to be available later this year.

According to Cisco, there are three main components to the new platform:

1) Connection Management at Scale: With the new platform, Cisco plans to manage the huge numbers of IoT devices that are coming online today. Since the company is considered a leader in connection management, and is already working with some of the biggest names in the industry, Cisco is most likely to deliver this without any glitch. The new tools will allow the users to maintain huge fleets of connected devices from unified applications.

2) Fog Computing: Cisco gave birth to Fog Computing years ago. Since then, it has been slogging on bringing computing closer to the action, to put data to work for businesses where it can have the biggest impact. With Fog Computing, the Cisco IoT Operations Platform plans to ensures that data processing and device control takes place at the right place for each job, especially as the needs of jobs changes in real-time.

3) Data Delivery: According to Cisco, once the platform is successfully able to provide their customers with a full control of their networks of devices, it is then going to help them collect, collate, and act on the data being generated by the systems. The platform's scalable tools for filtering and distribution will work towards ensuring that right data streams end up going to the right networks, data stores, applications and people.

Cisco is building the three components upon a strong foundation of security through Cisco’s Threat Defense solution. In order to come up with the platform, Cisco extensively looked at how it could better integrate the communications between machines and humans into environments.

According to Cisco, with the current tools, there isn't enough technical talent in the industry to take most of the IoT projects from prototype to production stage. The tech giant also states that a majority of its customer have informed them that without new and improved tools that address these business issues, projects will continue to fail. Hence, Cisco decided to come up with a coherent set of tools in the Cisco IoT Operations Platform.

What is encouraging is the fact that even with a high 75 per cent failure rate, firms are still interested in investing their time and money in IoT projects. According to 64 per cent of the companies surveyed by Cisco, the lessons that they have learned from their stalled or failed IoT initiatives have in fact helped them in accelerating their organisation’s investment in IoT.

The global installed base of IoT endpoints is expected to grow from 14.9 billion at the end of 2016 to more than a whopping 82 billion by the year 2025, according to statistics made available by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Reliance Launches IoT Platform To Connect Any Device Over Any Network

The Internet of Things (IoT) business unit of India's Reliance Group, Unlimit, and global IoT software provider, Cumulocity have come together and joined hands to launch a suite of new products and services on a new platform called 'Enablement'. Of course, the products and services will have IoT at their core.

According to a statement released by the two parties on the new development, 'Enablement’ as the name suggests will enable businesses to connect any device over any network, and then manage and store asset data, simply by controlling them in real-time by monitoring device availability and administering and rectifying any device faults that may occur.

Enablement's new product line will be showcasing off-the-shelf applications for a number of key verticals such as healthcare, asset tracking, financial services and industrial automation. Not only can the applications be used all across the globe, but they can also be tailored to meet any of the unique demands that the Indian market might have in the present or future.

According to IoT experts, the Indian subcontinent currently boosts of just the right ecosystem to fully exploit the uncountable benefits that IoT has to offer, with the necessity to efficiently manage commercial and public services for a large number of diverse enterprises and consumers that too at an affordable cost. In fact, some recent analyst reports predict that IoT in India will grow at a CAGR of 28% over the next 5 years. This technological growth can even result in India eclipsing some of the world's established economies.

The same sentiments are even echoed by Juergen Hase, Chief Executive Officer, Unlimit. He said, "With the number of connected devices in India projected to rise from 200 million today to 3 billion by 2020, nearly every part of the economy will be positively impacted by IoT."

He further added, "We are delighted to partner with Cumulocity to launch our new platform ‘Enablement’ and unlock the full potential of the Internet of Things for our customers and make the benefits of IoT virtually unlimited."

The partnership will extend Unlimit’s connectivity offerings, with Cumulocity’s advanced IoT application. Their combined platform will enable Unlimit’s customers to massively benefit from rapid machine, sensor and device integration, as well as data collection and real-time analytics for condition monitoring.

According to Bernd Gross, Chief Executive Officer, Cumulocity, Enablement will provide everyone in India with a mobile phone the capability of rapidly building, securing and deploying their own state-of-the-art IoT solution in an extremely cost-efficient way.

[Top Image: Tech Portal]

5 Open Source Home Automation Tools & Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) isn't just a promising idea anymore, the cat is now not only out of the bag but is also going great guns.

The world of IoT has opened a world where we can automate, protect, and monitor our houses like never before. One can now keep any eye on their toddlers in house while out for work, protect the house from theft, integrate their home theater system and even reduce the money spent on energy consumption. Yes, all this and a lot more can now happen, all thanks to IoT.

But, the one problem that most of the human beings face while adopting something new is its security and privacy scare. Each one of us wants to have some assurance that we would still have some basic authority over a particular device even if we have given a good ahead to it to externally communicate.

Here's where open source enters and works like a charm. Here's a list of 5 open source home automation tools which IndianWeb2.com considers considerably ahead of its competitors.

1) OpenHAB -

Open Home Automation Bus or OpenHAB is quite famous among the open source peers and enjoys a large user community. It's source code can be easily found on GitHub and is licensed under the Eclipse Public License. The home automation tool is one of the most easily portable tools that even runs efficiently on the tiny microcomputer, Raspberry Pi. Written in Java, the tool is known to support hundreds of devices and has been created to become device-agnostic while at the same time making it easier for the developers to keep adding their own plugins and devices to the system. The tool even allows the user to personally create their own User Interface for their home system.

2) Domoticz -

This particular home automation system is as easily accessible from the modern smartphones as it is from desktop browsers. Designed with an HTML5 frontend and written primarily in C/C++ under the GPLv3, Domoticz is extremely lightweight. According to its website, the system comes with an amazing variety of supported devices, ranging right from smoke detectors to weather stations to remote controls. Its source code can be easily accessed on GitHub.

3) OpenMotics -

Having both its hardware and software under the open source license collar, OpenMotics is a welcome change from all those systems that function by stitching together many devices from different providers. It is a comprehensive system for controlling devices that instead of being used mostly for easy retrofitting, has its eyes set on finding a hardwired solution. It is licensed under the GPLv2 and cab be easily downloaded on GitHub.

4) Calaos -

This home automation system is licensed under version 3 of the GPL. Known in the market to provide a full-stack home automation platform, it has a touchscreen interface, a preconfigured Linux OS to function underneath, served and web application and native mobile apps for Android and iOS devices. Since the instructions manual is mostly written in French, people not well versed with the language might have to face some initial hiccups.

5) Home Assistant -

Functional on any electronic machine/device running Python 3, this particular open source home automation platform has debuted under an MIT license. The system is known to easily ship with a Docker container to make deploying on other systems a cakewalk. Further, the system even integrates with scorers of open source as well as commercial products, providing the user the opportunity to link. The open source code for the system is easily available at GitHub.

Now, we turn to you. If you use or know any other home automation tool that is not in the above list, do let us know in your comment below.

5 Open Source Home Automation Tools & Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) isn't just a promising idea anymore, the cat is now not only out of the bag but is also going great guns.

The world of IoT has opened a world where we can automate, protect, and monitor our houses like never before. One can now keep any eye on their toddlers in house while out for work, protect the house from theft, integrate their home theater system and even reduce the money spent on energy consumption. Yes, all this and a lot more can now happen, all thanks to IoT.

But, the one problem that most of the human beings face while adopting something new is its security and privacy scare. Each one of us wants to have some assurance that we would still have some basic authority over a particular device even if we have given a good ahead to it to externally communicate.

Here's where open source enters and works like a charm. Here's a list of 5 open source home automation tools which www.indianweb2.com considers considerably ahead of its competitors.

1) OpenHAB -

Open Home Automation Bus or OpenHAB is quite famous among the open source peers and enjoys a large user community. It's source code can be easily found on GitHub and is licensed under the Eclipse Public License. The home automation tool is one of the most easily portable tools that even runs efficiently on the tiny microcomputer, Raspberry Pi. Written in Java, the tool is known to support hundreds of devices and has been created to become device-agnostic while at the same time making it easier for the developers to keep adding their own plugins and devices to the system. The tool even allows the user to personally create their own User Interface for their home system.

2) Domoticz -

This particular home automation system is as easily accessible from the modern smartphones as it is from desktop browsers. Designed with an HTML5 frontend and written primarily in C/C++ under the GPLv3, Domoticz is extremely lightweight. According to its website, the system comes with an amazing variety of supported devices, ranging right from smoke detectors to weather stations to remote controls. Its source code can be easily accessed on GitHub.

3) OpenMotics -

Having both its hardware and software under the open source license collar, OpenMotics is a welcome change from all those systems that function by stitching together many devices from different providers. It is a comprehensive system for controlling devices that instead of being used mostly for easy retrofitting, has its eyes set on finding a hardwired solution. It is licensed under the GPLv2 and cab be easily downloaded on GitHub.

4) Calaos -

This home automation system is licensed under version 3 of the GPL. Known in the market to provide a full-stack home automation platform, it has a touchscreen interface, a preconfigured Linux OS to function underneath, served and web application and native mobile apps for Android and iOS devices. Since the instructions manual is mostly written in French, people not well versed with the language might have to face some initial hiccups.

5) Home Assistant -

Functional on any electronic machine/device running Python 3, this particular open source home automation platform has debuted under an MIT license. The system is known to easily ship with a Docker container to make deploying on other systems a cakewalk. Further, the system even integrates with scorers of open source as well as commercial products, providing the user the opportunity to link. The open source code for the system is easily available at GitHub.

Now, we turn to you. If you use or know any other home automation tool that is not in the above list, do let us know in your comment below.