Jun 03, 2016IBM and Cisco Collaborating
Networking giant Cisco has been advancing the development of fog computing, through which it bolsters computing power at the edge of an Internet of Things network, in order to reduce the amount of data transmitted to cloud-based platforms. Now, the companies have announced, Cisco is entering into a global collaboration with IBM, to bring IBM's Watson cognitive computing platform and business analytics technologies to businesses and organizations in remote locations—such as on oil rigs or shipping companies, or in mines—where they will be married with Cisco's edge analytics.
The companies have also revealed three early collaborators and customers:
• Cisco and IBM are working with Canadian telecommunications firm Bell Canada to serve data analytics solutions to Canadian businesses. By working together, the three companies will provide Bell's customers with IBM's Watson IoT and Cisco's analytics services, as well as real-time data-collection services, via Bell's 4G LTE network. In a statement, Stephen Howe, Bell's chief technology officer, said many of his firm's largest customers operate remote systems, "requiring continuous availability and access to data to monitor critical performance factors and avoid downtime."
• The Port of Cartagena, in Colombia, will use IBM's and Cisco's services to improve the utilization of its assets, including rubber tire gantries, cranes and trucks, by better monitoring the temperature, speed and run hours of the engines in these assets. The port will utilize the Watson IoT platform with Cisco streaming edge analytics to perform predictive maintenance techniques, in an effort to keep machines running more efficiently, as well as to avoid failures.
• SilverHook Powerboats, which designs high-speed racing watercraft, is working with IBM and Cisco to enable the collection and analysis of data to help race pilots react immediately to changing conditions in real time, and to prevent damage to the boat's control systems and engines.
Smart Parking in Belgrade
In Serbia's capital, finding a parking spot should be getting easier, as Parking Servis, a company that manages paid street parking services in Belgrade, begins deploying Nedap's in-ground Sensit occupancy sensors to inform drivers of the availability of parking within the city. The Sensit system uses infrared and magnetic sensors to determine if a car is parked in a parking spot, and then transmits the spot's status to a gateway via an ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) radio transmission. This data is then forwarded to digital signs mounted nearby to convey the number of open spots available on the street at any given time. The system is designed to enable more consistent flow of traffic by helping drivers navigate directly to the areas with available parking, instead of their having to slowly circle a city corridor.
Once they find a spot, drivers can pay for parking via a mobile phone app that Parking Servis provides. Initially, the company will deploy the Sensit sensors at 850 on-street parking spots on the city's Njegoševa Street. Eventually, Parking Servis plans to install the sensors in 3,500 parking spots throughout Belgrade, and to enable drivers to use their mobile phones to navigate directly to an open spot, though an integration between Nedap's sensor network and Parking Servis' mobile app.
VMWare Enters IoT Market With Liota
Cloud services and virtualization software provider VMWare has entered the Internet of Things market with the Little IoT Agent—or, more concisely, Liota. Liota is an open-source software development kit designed to help developers create secure IoT data and control orchestration applications. The company says Liota can be used to create a single app that works across gateways from multiple gateway vendors. It can run on any gateway device or operating system that supports the Python programming language, and is available on GitHub.
In a blog post, Bask Iyer, VMWare's CIO, wrote, "Liota Open Source SDK provides the libraries to develop applications that connect and orchestrate data and control flows across things, gateways and the cloud."
Microchip Direct Selling Semtech-made LoRa Starter Kit
Semtech reports that it has supplied Microchip Technology, a provider of microcontrollers and analog semiconductors, with components for an evaluation kit designed to help developers test a LoRa-based low-power wide-area network (LoRaWAN) in either the European 868 MHz band or the North American 915 MHZ band. The kit, which is available at microchipDIRECT for $499, includes a LoRaWAN gateway, a pair of Microchip Mote end-device modules (LoRaWAN sensors) and a local LoRaWAN network server application. LoRa, a protocol developed by Semtech and IBM, supports low-duty-cycle applications with low data-rate requirements, for a wide range of applications such as tracking and monitoring assets, collecting data from utility infrastructure and meters, or public-safety applications.
Healthy Growth Seen in Federal Spending on IoT
The U.S. Federal Government spent almost $9 billion on IoT technology during fiscal year 2015 for unclassified projects, according to a report from Govini, a research firm focused on government spending. This spending represents a 10 percent compound annual growth rate since fiscal year 2011 and 20 percent year-over-year growth in FY 2015. In total, accounting for software, infrastructure and cybersecurity, the government spent $35 billion on IoT technology from fiscal years 2011 to 2015.
The strongest spending growth has been for sensors, which saw a 56 percent spending increase in FY 2015. According to the report: "Sensors are a particularly unique facet of the federal IoT market as their development and proliferation is primarily due to defense technologies and NASA R&D efforts in partnership with universities. While sensors represented just under 10 percent of the IoT market in FY11, that share rose to almost 18 percent in FY15 from mission-critical defense requirements for surveillance and situational awareness to protect the warfighter. Sensor spend almost tripled in that timeframe, rising from $578 million in FY11 to $1.6 billion in FY 15."
SAG, ST Deliver Tiny NFC Tag for IoT Applications
Semiconductor company STMicroelectronics and Securitag Assembly Group (SAG), a supplier of RFID transponders, have announced a tiny Near Field Communication (NFC) tag that uses STMicroelectronics' ST25 NFC tag IC designed for Internet of Things data-transmission applications, especially in consumer electronics, wearable devices and smart health-care products. The NFC Ferrite Tag (0503), made with sintered ferrite antenna, measures just 4.9 millimeters by 3.0 millimeters by 2.5 millimeters (0.2 inch by 0.12 inch by 0.1 inch)—which, the companies say, makes it suitable for wearable products, for which compactness is critical.
The NFC Ferrite Tag can be surface-mounted during production through the metal pad that can be directly soldered to the PCB surface. The tag can function when placed on metal products, according to the two companies, due to its anti-metallic interference characteristics. ST's ST25TA02K NFC Forum Type 4 tag IC supports the NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF), so the NDEF data can be directly executed via an Android NFC smartphone without any dedicated application software. In addition to NDEF support, the ST25TA02K features a 20-bit counter and a 128-bit password to protect read-write access to the 2 kilobits of EEPROM memory.
The two companies report that they will collaborate to meet the growing NFC demand that is expected to drive new IoT and wireless applications for smart home, health-care, city and factory environments. With ST's global reach and semiconductor leadership, combined with SAG's professional manufacturing of RFID tags, the partners say they aim to accelerate innovation and new product development in order to strengthen the competitiveness of their customers' final products.
Samples of the NFC Ferrite Tag are available at SAG's website. Samples of the ST25TA02K NFC Tag IC are available at STMicroelectronics' site.