US based International Business Machines (IBM) Corp will invest $3 billion over the next four years in a new ‘Internet of Things‘ unit, aiming to sell its expertise in gathering and making sense of the surge in real-time data. This unit will allow customers to collect and compute data from smartphones and sensor-equipped devices such as cars. It also announced a related partnership with the Weather Company, the mother firm of The Weather Channel, which powers weather apps of Apple, Google and Microsoft.
IBM’s IoT unit (a phrase used for data transmitted over a network by sensor-equipped devices and smartphones) is the newest entrant in an emerging sector that already has giants such as General Electric, Microsoft and Cisco. Big Blue, as IBM is also called, estimates that 90% of such data generated is never analysed or acted upon; and almost 60% of this data begins losing value within milliseconds. Companies can analyse this data to understand consumer behavior, anticipate business outcomes and tailor products, and services accordingly.
Internet of Things
- IOT refers to a network of devices which are rooted with electronic sensors and data transmitting technologies and connected over the internet.
- By using the Internet the data collected by sensors in a device can be transmitted to other networked devices and systems.
- The technology goes beyond machine-to-machine communications (M2M) and covers a variety of protocols, domains, and applications.
