ARM signs with Big Blue for cloudy IoT services

ARM, which in late July bought Israeli Internet of Things Sansa Security, has added another plank to its IoT strategy by signing on with IBM's IoT Foundation.

Based on SoftLayer, IBM's IoT Foundation combines analytics tools, the Bluemix PaaS offering, and security services. ARM's involvement, according to the IBM announcement, is designed to give it a “unified chip-to-cloud, enterprise-class IoT platform.”

The integration will let ARM's mbed chips automatically register with the IoT Foundation, so that “information gathered from deployed sensors in any connected device is delivered to the cloud for analysis”.

Embedded systems – the boring old name for Internet of Things devices – are shaping up as an engine room for ARM.

In its most recent financial presentation, ARM claimed an 85 per cent global share in the mobile space, compared to a 10 per cent share of “enterprise infrastructure” and a 25 per cent share in embedded systems.

But the embedded segment showed the best growth in the company, with 2015 60 per cent higher than 2014 (compared to 30 per cent growth in its enterprise business and just 15 per cent growth in mobiles).

At the same time, IBM also announced IoT for Electronics, which will give other electronics manufacturers a similar sensor-to-cloud data-gathering capability. ®