Intel Corporation today announced the Intel IoT Platform, an end-to-end reference model designed to unify and simplify connectivity and security for the Internet of Things (IoT). Intel also introduced integrated hardware and software products based on the new platform and new relationships with an expanded ecosystem of system integrators that promise to move IoT from infancy to mass deployment.

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. Data will be unlocked faster to extract meaningful information and value for consumers and businesses.

For example, Rudin Management, a New York City real estate company who developed its own system software called DiBoss, has demonstrated that it can intelligently manage energy and other systems in its buildings. In one year, in one building, the company saved nearly $1 million to its bottom line, which would translate to a savings of 50 cents for every square foot of real estate it owns and manages.

“The power of IoT on our company’s business will have significant impact,” said John Gilbert, COO, Rudin Management. “We are a real estate company that used to dabble in technology, but now because of IoT, we are a technology company that dabbles in real estate.”

Horizontal Approach to IoT
The Intel IoT Platform helps deliver innovations to market faster, reducing solution complexity, and delivering actionable intelligence faster by offering a defined, repeatable foundation for how devices will connect and deliver trusted data to the cloud.

“With this platform we are continuing to expand our IoT product family beyond silicon with enhancements to our pre-integrated solutions that make IoT more accessible to solution providers,” said Doug Davis, vice president and general manager, Internet of Things Group, Intel. “IoT is a rapidly growing market but faces scalability hurdles. By simplifying the development process and making it easier to deploy new solutions that address market needs, we can help accelerate innovation.”

Expanding IoT Ecosystem
IoT has enormous potential to drive economic value and social change, but no company can do it alone. A robust ecosystem is needed to scale. To that end, Intel announced new solutions and relationships to boost the IoT ecosystem. Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, Dell, HCL, NTT DATA, SAP, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Wipro and others are joining together with Intel to develop and deploy solutions using their building blocks on the Intel IoT Platform. These solutions will help provide a repeatable foundation for IoT and free up developers’ time to focus on building solutions that expertly address specific customer pain points.

“Accenture is focused on helping clients realize the business value of the IoT as quickly and easily as possible,” said Mike Sutcliff, group chief executive, Accenture Digital. “Our combined capabilities can help us achieve that, and can also help clients get around some of the biggest roadblocks to IoT adoption by offering a simpler, faster way to roll out end to end IoT solutions than currently exists. Together, we can enable clients to define a clear value strategy for the IoT, and by using Accenture’s industry experience and digital assets to complement Intel’s IoT platform, we can create robust, end-to-end frameworks designed to overcome challenges associated with security, scalability and interoperability in IoT implementations.”

Integrated Hardware and Software
Intel is also delivering a roadmap of integrated hardware and software products to support the Intel IoT Platform. Spanning from edge devices out to the cloud, the roadmap includes API management and service creation software, edge-to-cloud connectivity and analytics, intelligent gateways, and a full line of scalable IA processors. Security is fundamental to the roadmap with both dedicated security products and security features embedded into hardware and software products.

Intel is evolving and optimizing this product roadmap to work seamlessly together with building blocks from the ecosystem to address the key challenges solution providers are facing when implementing IoT, including interoperability, security and connectivity.

The new products from Intel include:

• Wind River Edge Management System provides cloud connectivity to facilitate device configuration, file transfers, data capture and 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. The cloud-based middleware runs from the embedded device up through the cloud to reduce time to market and total cost of ownership.
• The latest Intel® IoT Gateway will integrate the Wind River Edge Management System via an available agent so gateways can be rapidly deployed, provisioned and managed throughout the life cycle of a system to reduce costs and time to market. In addition, the gateway includes performance improvements, support for lower cost memory options and a broader selection of available communication options. Intel IoT Gateways are currently available from seven ODMs with 13 more releasing systems in early 2015.
• 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. Intel is expanding its cloud analytics support for IoT Developer Kits to include the Intel® IoT Gateway series, in addition to Intel® Galileo boards and Intel® Edison Modules. Cloud analytics enables IoT application developers to detect trends and anomalies in time series at big data scale.
• McAfee, a part of Intel Security, announced Enhanced Security for Intel IoT Gateways in support of the Intel IoT Platform. This pre-validated solution adds advanced security management for gateway devices.
• Intel Security also announced that its Enhanced Privacy Identity (EPID) technology will be promoted to other silicon vendors. EPID has anonymity properties, in addition to hardware-enforced integrity, and is included in ISO and TCG standards. The EPID technology provides an on-ramp for other devices to securely connect to the Intel IoT Platform.
• The Intel API and Traffic Management solution utilizes Intel Mashery solutions to enable creation of building blocks that make it easy to build new software applications. Customers of the Intel IoT Platform today have access to the Intel Mashery API management tools to create data APIs that can be shared internally, externally with partners or monetized as revenue-generating data services for customers.

Intel is working to create a robust, scalable IoT ecosystem.