IBM announced an array of new services, industry offerings and capabilities to help enterprise clients, startups and developers drive digital transformation with the Internet of Things (IoT).
With the number of connected devices skyrocketing, IBM is making IoT accessible to millions around the world. IBM is dedicating more than 1,500 industry experts with its new Watson IoT Consulting Solutions, as well as giving open and free access to its Watson IoT Platform.
Today’s announcement follows Forrester Research naming IBM a leader in its Wave report on IoT software platforms.
“The Internet of Things is making an enormous impact on our lives and helping to spur even deeper levels of innovation for those developing the connected devices and products of our future,” said Harriet Green, General Manager, IBM Watson IoT, Commerce and Education. “IBM is helping knock down the barriers to getting started with IoT, making it accessible for clients as they begin their digital transformation.”
To help clients across industries capture the massive business opportunity of the digitization of the physical world, IBM today is launching a global IBM Watson IoT Consulting Solutions practice. The practice will feature 1,500 experts across IBM Watson IoT headquarters in Munich, Germany and in eight other IBM IoT centers across Asia, Europe and the Americas. By integrating IBM Watson IoT Platform APIs and technologies, including cognitive, analytics, mobile, security and cloud capabilities, together with development and implementation consulting and ongoing support, clients can fully use the IoT without the risk and complexity of dealing with multiple vendors.
"Clients can now easily introduce IoT innovation into their business by leveraging IBM’s industry and technical expertise to deliver lower risk, as-a-service commercial models. We are very proud our integrated IoT solutions deliver innovation in an easy to consume model for business leaders,” said Jesus Mantas, GM, Business Consulting, IBM. “We are helping clients accelerate the digitization of their business processes by making it easy to deploy IoT solutions globally into their business”.
The IBM Watson IoT Consulting Solutions practice will employ a global network of skilled consultants, data scientists and design and security experts with deep domain and industry expertise, all dedicated to providing clients with guidance on tackling industry specific IoT adoption challenges. The first priority industries include automotive, electronics, industrial products, insurance, retail, telecommunications, transportation and buildings. Clients can apply Watson cognitive computing capabilities, including machine learning and natural language to tap into massive amounts of unstructured data -- such as videos and sounds –- to gain insights and augment decision making.
In addition to the new Watson IoT Consulting Solutions practice, IBM also is announcing new industry offerings available via its Watson IoT Platform, including IBM Watson IoT for Manufacturing and Asset Health Insight, designed to help clients address industry-specific IoT adoption challenges and opportunities.
The IBM Watson IoT Platform, a security-rich, scalable and open platform, let's developers quickly connect, build, launch and manage IoT applications and solutions.
To help make creating and developing IoT applications more accessible than ever before, IBM will offer:
- Free access to IBM Watson IoT Platform: For businesses who are just starting out on IoT and developers testing out and exploring new IoT innovations, IBM offers open and free access to the IBM Watson IoT Platform development capabilities. As projects grow, developers can then take their prototypes and scale to full production to meet business needs.
- IoT education courses: To help the new wave of technical innovators learn how to develop IoT applications, IBM continues to offer industry-leading learning classes, via its collaboration with Coursera, and via new, easily consumable IoT learning tutorials on IBM’s open Watson IoT Academy. These tutorials, led by IBM subject matter experts, include an introduction to programming a Raspberry Pi; how to use Natural Language Processing; and how to use Node-RED, the open source visual programming tool set that is becoming a standard for building connected IoT programs.
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