Intel moves to bring the concept of an Internet of Things closer to reality

Source: Intel website.

Intel has boosted its work around the Internet of Things (IoT) with the Intel IoT Platform, an end-to-end reference model designed to unify and simplify connectivity and security for IoT. The company has also introduced integrated hardware and software products based on the new platform and new relationships with an expanded ecosystem of system integrators that promise to move IoT towards mass deployment.

The new offerings and relationships will make it easier for solution providers to move IoT from pockets of pilots to mainstream deployments with a repeatable foundation of building blocks that can be customised for limitless solutions. Data will be unlocked faster to extract meaningful information and value for consumers and businesses.

The Intel IoT Platform helps deliver innovations to market faster, reducing solution complexity, and delivering actionable intelligence faster by offering a defined, repeatable foundation for how devices will connect and deliver trusted data to the cloud.

“With this platform we are continuing to expand our IoT product family beyond silicon with enhancements to our pre-integrated solutions that make IoT more accessible to solution providers,” said Doug Davis, VP and GM, Internet of Things Group, Intel. “IoT is a rapidly growing market, but faces scalability hurdles. By simplifying the development process and making it easier to deploy new solutions that address market needs, we can help accelerate innovation.”

Intel acknowledges that no company can do it alone, announcing new solutions and relationships to boost the IoT ecosystem. Accenture,Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, Dell, HCL, NTT DATA, SAP, Tata Consultancy, Wipro and others are joining together with Intel to develop and deploy solutions using their building blocks on the Intel IoT Platform. These solutions will help provide a repeatable foundation for IoT and free up developers' time to focus on building solutions that expertly address specific customer pain points.

“Accenture is focused on helping clients realise the business value of the IoT as quickly and easily as possible,” said Mike Sutcliff, Group Chief Executive, Accenture Digital. “Our combined capabilities can help us achieve that, and can also help clients get around some of the biggest roadblocks to IoT adoption by offering a simpler, faster way to roll out end-to-end IoT solutions than currently exists. 

"Together, we can enable clients to define a clear value strategy for the IoT, and by using Accenture’s industry experience and digital assets to complement Intel’s IoT platform, we can create robust, end-to-end frameworks designed to overcome challenges associated with security, scalability and interoperability in IoT implementations.”

Intel is also delivering a roadmap of integrated hardware and software products to support the Intel IoT Platform. The roadmap includes API management and service creation software, edge-to-cloud connectivity and analytics, intelligent gateways, and a full line of scalable Intel architecture processors. There are dedicated security products as well as security features that are embedded into the hardware and software products.

Intel is evolving and optimising this product roadmap to work seamlessly together with building blocks from the ecosystem to address the key challenges solution providers are facing when implementing IoT, including interoperability, security and connectivity.

The new products from Intel include:

· Wind River Edge Management System, which provides cloud connectivity to facilitate device configuration, file transfers, data capture, and rules-based data analysis and response. This pre-integrated technology stack enables customers to quickly build industry-specific IoT solutions and integrate disparate enterprise IT systems, utilising API management. The cloud-based middleware runs from the embedded device up through the cloud to reduce time to market and total cost of ownership.

· The latest Intel IoT Gateway integrates the Wind River Edge Management System via an available agent so gateways can be rapidly deployed, provisioned and managed. In addition, the gateway includes performance improvements, support for lower cost memory options and a broader selection of available communication options. Intel IoT Gateways are currently available from seven original design manufacturers (ODMs) with 13 more releasing systems in early 2015.

· Intel is expanding support for the Intel Analytics Service for IoT Developer Kits to include the Intel IoT Gateway DK series, in addition existing support for Galileo and Edison. The kit enables anomaly detection in time series data and is offered free of charge.

· McAfee, a part of Intel Security, announced Enhanced Security for Intel IoT Gateways in support of the Intel IoT Platform. This pre-validated solution adds advanced security management for gateway devices.

· Intel Security also announced that its Enhanced Privacy Identity (EPID) technology will be promoted to other silicon vendors. EPID has anonymity support, in addition to hardware-enforced integrity, and is included in the ISO and TCG standards. The EPID technology provides an on-ramp for other devices to securely connect to the Intel IoT Platform.

· The Intel API and Traffic Management solution utilises Intel Mashery solutions to enable creation of building blocks that make it easy to build new software applications. Customers of the Intel IoT Platform today have access to the Intel Mashery API management tools to create data APIs that can be shared internally, externally with partners or monetised as revenue-generating data services for customers.

Read the blog post on Intel's IoT strategy in September 2014.