Arm said that it would continue to support customers of Treasure Data, which has raised $54 million in funding since it was founded in 2011. But the company also plans to combine Treasure Data with its other software over the next year. That includes Stream Technologies and Arm Mbed, which allows users to manage and update devices over the cloud. Customers will pay a monthly fee for the service.
The new service, which will be called Pelion, exemplifies how seriously tech companies are trying to lower the bar for Internet of Things development. Google and Microsoft have pushed into device management to win over new cloud customers. Other companies like General Electric and Honeywell have focused on harnessing the wealth of data collected from industries like healthcare or manufacturing.
What makes the new service different, according to Dipesh Patel, president of Arm’s Internet of Things services group, is that “it is a truly horizontal platform capable of managing any number or type of devices and connectivity, dealing with any type of data and linking to any cloud.” He added on a conference call about the deal: “You can get a single unified view of your devices and data.”
The service gives companies another way to combat security threats, which could also inhibit the Internet of Things. With Pelion, companies can remotely patch everything from factory sensors to traffic lights as vulnerabilities arise. Manually updating billions of chips that may not be replaced for decades would be too costly and impractical. Arm’s chief executive has said that managing security is more realistic than solving it.
With Pelion, companies are able to automatically onboard and provision devices deployed on private data centers or over the cloud, Patel said. It also manages connectivity based on any wireless standard used in any geographic location. Treasure Data gives customers the ability to take advantage of data from any number of devices. “The biggest theme we are seeing in the IoT is complexity,” said Patel. “It needs to be made simple,” he said.
This article was first published in Electronic Design - www.electronicdesign.com
