Mar 13, 2015Caterpillar Inks Deal With Predictive Analytics Firm Uptake
Industrial equipment manufacturer Caterpillar has entered into a sales agreement with Uptake, a provider of an analytics platform for collecting data from sensors and other sources, aggregating that information and generating predictive maintenance alerts. Caterpillar has also made a minority investment in Uptake and plans to co-develop an end-to-end platform for predictive diagnostics with the company.
Caterpillar's goal is to make the resulting platform and services available to its sales network, for both Cat and non-Cat branded products, with the aim of enabling its customers to monitor and optimize their fleets. In a statement, Doug Oberhelman, Caterpillar's chairman and CEO, said, "We want to empower our customers with the insight necessary to shift from a reactive 'repair after failure' mode to a proactive 'repair before failure' stance."
Through its Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) subsidiary, Caterpillar has already been working with Uptake since last year. Uptake provides EMD with locomotive-related predictive diagnostics services.
Cisco, Deutsche Telekom and Intel Announce Joint Startup Program
Cisco, Deutsche Telekom and Intel recently unveiled an IoT accelerator program for startups from the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. Dubbed Challenge Up!, the program aims to stoke innovation among early-stage companies developing IoT technologies or IoT-based solutions. The three partner companies will support Challenge Up! startups through joint projects, mentoring, networking and other support, with the goal of helping the startups enter the marketplace quickly. Selected companies in the program may also receive strategic investments from the three firms.
The program will bring together resources from existing startup initiatives within the organizations, including Cisco Entrepreneurs in Residence (Cisco EIR), Intel Business Challenge Europe and hub:raum powered by Deutsche Telekom. Interested startups can apply at www.challengeup.eu. The application period will end on May 25.
Survey Indicates Strong Interest in Business Solutions
Embarcadero Research, a San Francisco software developer, sponsored a survey conducted last year by Dimensional Research in which 1,040 developers and development managers involved in IoT projects around the world were asked about the status of and drivers behind their use of IoT technologies. According to the report, half of the IoT solutions are being developed for business applications (either internal or as products or services for other businesses), 16 percent are exclusively consumer-facing, and the balance of IoT solutions have both consumer and business applications.
The survey includes a wide range of questions based on how the developers are approaching architecture, interface and data storage, as well as where they think the IoT-based solution will have the most impact. Among the queried developers, 23 percent reported having no IoT-related projects currently in the pipeline. Focusing on other priorities was the leading reason for this, but 25 percent of the group with no IoT project underway said they lacked a budget for such an effort, while 18 percent indicated they lacked the required skills and 17 percent cited a lack of demand for an IoT-related product or solution.
DecaWave Launches Real-Time Location System Evaluation Kit
DecaWave, a provider of ultra-wideband (UWB) indoor positioning technology that is accurate up to 10 centimeters (3.9 inches), supports a data rate of 6.8 megabytes per second, and has a read range of 35 meters (114.8 feet) without line-of-sight or up to 290 meters (951.4 feet) with line-of-sight, has announced a new evaluation kit, known as TREK1000. The kit is designed to enable customers to quickly evaluate DecaWave's chips and modules, which are built on the IEEE 802-5-14a network standard.
The TREK1000 kit contains four DecaWave EVB1000 evaluation boards, which can both receive and transmit signals, and allow users to set up and evaluate the technology for a range of use cases, such as asset tracking, geo-fencing and wayfinding. The kit also comes with software to configure the boards and view their location on a map of the test area. It is available from Digikey or Semiconductorestore.com for $999.