News

Intel Launches Platform for Internet of Things Analytics

• By David Ramel
• 12/10/2014

The new Intel Internet of Things (IoT) Platform introduced by the world's largest processor manufacturer seeks to provide "an end-to-end reference model and family of products" that combines with third-party solutions to help securely and easily connect devices to deliver trusted data to the cloud for analytics initiatives.

Analysts and industry watchers said the move is an attempt to gain traction for the company's x86-based architecture in the exploding Internet of Things arena where low-powered ARM chips have led the way, similar to the resource-constrained smartphone industry.

To do that, Intel is forming partnerships and adding software and services to its integrated hardware offerings as part of the new Intel IoT Platform, focusing on security, interoperability, scalability and manageability to boost real IoT deployments. Intel described its platform as "an end-to-end reference model designed to unify and simplify connectivity and security for the IoT."

Its partners and systems integrators include a bevy of industry players, including Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, Dell and many more.

"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 customized for limitless solutions," Intel said in a statement. "Data will be unlocked faster to extract meaningful information and value for consumers and businesses."

Intel is wooing Big Data developers by beefing up its cloud analytics support for IoT Developer Kits, including several new products such as the Intel IoT Gateway series. "To get value out of the data generated in deployments using the Intel IoT Platform, developers need a powerful yet easy-to-use approach to big data analytics," the company said. "Cloud analytics enables IoT application developers to detect trends and anomalies in time series at Big Data scale."

The IoT Developer Kits include: hardware such as boards, sensors and actuators; software tools including images or packages; support for leading IDEs such as Eclipse, Intel XDK IoT Edition, Arduino and Wyliodrin; cloud services; and additional tools and products to boost optimization and performance.

In addition to the developer kits and IoT gateways, Intel highlighted the Wind River Edge Management System as a central product of its new platform. That Wind River product -- integrated with the latest Intel IoT Gateway -- supplies connectivity to the cloud to help configure devices, transfer files, capture data and provide 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, utilizing API management," Intel said. "The cloud-based middleware runs from the embedded device up through the cloud to reduce time to market and total cost of ownership."

Intel also announced that security company McAfee will provide Enhanced Security for Intel IoT Gateways in support of the new platform. Also on the security front, Intel said its Enhanced Privacy Identity (EPID) technology will be provided to other processor vendors.

Finally, Intel said, the Intel API and Traffic Management solution will enable the creation of building blocks to ease building of new software applications. The company said customers can use Intel Mashery API management tools to build data APIs that can be shared internally or with partners or can be monetized to create revenue-generating data services.

Intel's Doug Fisher blogged about the new platform yesterday and summarized Intel's mission: "For the IoT to be truly scalable, the edge devices -- the 'things' in the IoT -- need to be more intelligent, faster and easily able to communicate with each other."