Jasper and IBM working to integrate IoT systems

Jasper, a global Internet of Things (IoT) platform leader, today announced it is working with IBM to integrate their IoT service platform, Control Center with IBM’s IoT Foundation.

IBM is aiming to be a big player in IoT and in March this year pledged itself ready to allocate $3 billion towards building a substantial IoT unit which would go out and leverage IBM’s core “big data” processing skills in the emerging market.

Data and infrastructure security are the most cited enterprise concerns about the IoT.

“We help companies transform their business from selling products to [selling] services”, said Simon Berman, VP of product marketing, in a phone interview. While they [organizations] want to move onto the IoT, they don’t want to reinvent the wheel.

Large corporations will be able to access Jasper’s Control Center through IBM’s Bluemix.

Jasper styles itself as the world’s first “billion dollar” (it recently completed a $50 million funding deal which valued it at over $1 billion) IoT company and has rolled out M2M (as was) or IoT applications for more than 2000 enterprises around the world, including, it says, General Motors, Starbucks, Uber and Heineken.

Here’s a snapshot of where Jasper sits in the IoT management stack.

While that looks like something that IBM could eat for breakfast financially, there’s an important caveat: IBM doesn’t have the partnerships with the global telecom companies that Jasper has that makes the IoT possible. The company characterized IoT as “major focus of investment”, noting that 90% of data from smartphones, tablets, connected appliances, and connected vehicles is never analyzed or acted upon.

And Jasper has been playing on that for a long time.

Enterprises in any industry can quickly bring IoT services to market via a single solution that enables them to manage IoT application development, connectivity and the entire service lifecycle.

Jasper and IBM announced on Tuesday they will combine their Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities in a bid to provide a more compelling suite of services to enterprises.

Berman added that IBM’s IoT Foundation is a Platform-as-a-Service solution that adds security and reporting as well as massive scalability. Jasper partners with 27 mobile operator groups, representing more than 100 mobile operator networks worldwide, to deliver the benefits of Control Center in over 100 countries. As a result, the company can offer additional data-oriented services that generate recurring revenue.