Kii IoT Platform Selected by Kyocera to Power Smart Healthcare

27 October 2015 - Kii, a leading Internet of Things (IoT) cloud platform provider, today announced a strategic collaboration with Kyocera Corporation (Kyocera) to develop a cloud-based healthcare monitoring service and smart device combination called 'Daily Support'. Kyocera selected Kii as a cloud partner because of the wide variety of features suitable for its business model and global deployment availability.

Daily Support features an 11-gram wearable device created by Kyocera called 'TSUC' that measures step counts, calorie consumption and status detection differentiations, which determine the variances between walking or running on flat surfaces vs stairs, travelling in vehicles such as a bicycle or car, or riding an elevator vs. an escalator. By collaborating with Kii, TSUC can easily connect to the cloud for user calorie and activity data monitoring. It is designed specifically for company employees, health insurance and healthcare service providers.

Daily Support’s core user capabilities include:

• Measuring the amount of daily activity, as well as other detailed data points on activity, sleep, visceral fat and calorie consumption when worn by users
• Automatically uploading the data to the user’s smartphone, allowing for effortless monitoring of lifestyle-related data
• Collecting data on the amount of activity, sleep, visceral fat and calorie consumption via an app
• Monitoring conditions through graphs and figures displayed in the app
• Unique ranking and point system among users
• Observing the activities and data of the service, users on the Web site and send messages individually to promote better habits, as well as send group messages to users with similar tendencies
• Visualising activity by the device, as it can measure calories when a user takes a picture of a meal, and monitor sleep, and visualise internal fat via a new, proprietary technology.

“Partnering with a world renowned brand like Kyocera to launch a smart healthcare device and service that helps users to lead a healthier lifestyle is a double win for Kii,” said Masanari Arai, CEO of Kii (above). “We will continue to bring the IoT to mainstream audiences across the globe by collaborating with other world class technology companies to help millions of consumers improve their health and daily lives.”

Kyocera leverages user, device and data management, and analytics on Kii Cloud to analyse data and provide information to each end user. Kyocera launched Daily Support in collaboration with the Association for Preventive Medicine of Japan in Autumn 2015.

About Kii
Kii is focused on addressing the high-performance demands of innovation in the connected world with an end-to-end backend platform optimised for enterprise applications and the Internet of Things (IoT). Businesses of all sizes are able to build, test, deploy, optimise and acquire users from a single integrated platform to accelerate time to market. y

Trusted by the world’s largest mobile carriers such as NTT Docomo, Kii currently serves 140M+ end users worldwide. Kii is a global company with data centres in the US, China, Japan and Singapore. For more information, follow @KiiCorp and @KiiEMEA or visit www.kii.com.

Source: Kii

Pacific Controls Launches Smart City Platform on Microsoft Azure

22 October 2015  Pacific Control Systems, a leading IoT services provider, and Microsoft today announced the availability of Pacific Controls’ Galaxy 2021, a state-of-the-art Enterprise City Management software platform, built on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure.

Galaxy 2021 is a future-ready software platform capable of enabling a broad range of smart services focused both on public and private sector. The platform enables the provision of  security, healthcare, hospitality, education, retail, transportation, infrastructure and financial applications as services.

“Our partnership with Microsoft will deliver a global IoT marketplace available for OEMs, Microsoft channel partners and telecom operators to enhance their services, said Dilip Rahulan, Executive Chairman and CEO of PCS (above). "OEMs will be able to enhance their aftermarket services by enabling IOT Services with reduced maintenance costs, deliver continued high performance of equipment and provide actionable business intelligence to improve products and services delivery creating new aftermarket values.”

“By offering a complete package comprising of cloud based IoT platform, big data analytics, extensive range of IoT applications, device integration capabilities, monitoring capabilities, effective business processes and business skills transfer, PCS is enabling telecom operators to seize IoT opportunities in an accelerated mode,” he added.

Samer Abu Ltaif, Regional General Manager of Microsoft Gulf (left), said, “Pacific Controls’ powerful IoT Galaxy 2021 platform together with Microsoft Azure infrastructure offers an unmatchable value proposition. It leverages analytical capabilities of both Galaxy 2021 and Microsoft Data Platform. We are proud of our partnership with PCS and the value it brings to our joint customers.”

The availability of Galaxy 2021 on Microsoft Azure will allow comprehensive Digital Business Platform to enterprises around the world. The unmatched capabilities of Galaxy 2021 to handle big data analytics and integrate variety of machines, equipment and systems combined with Azure’s network of scalable secure private connections, hybrid databases, storage, data residency and encryption features create a very powerful global proposition to build and deploy IoT applications.

Galaxy 2021 is an intelligent, accessible and actionable enterprise-level platform. It will use Azure’s analytics components such as stream analytics, events hub and machine learning services to further strengthen data driven business intelligence components and enable mass deployment of IoT services.

Source: Pacific Controls

PTC to Acquire Augmented Reality Leader Vuforia

12 October 2015 – PTC today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Vuforia business from Qualcomm Connected Experiences, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, for $65 million. Vuforia is the industry’s most advanced and widely adopted augmented reality (AR) technology platform, and will enrich PTC’s technology portfolio and accelerate PTC’s strategy as a leading provider of technologies and solutions that blend the digital and physical worlds.

Under terms of the agreement, PTC will acquire the award-winning Vuforia business, including the developer ecosystem. PTC is committed to continued investment in the Vuforia platform and to the ongoing support and growth of the Vuforia ecosystem.

Vuforia is a mobile vision platform that enables applications (“apps”) to see and connect the physical world with digital experiences that demand attention, drive engagement, and deliver value. Today, Vuforia is supported by a global ecosystem of developers in 130 countries, and has powered more than 20,000 apps with more than 200 million app installs worldwide.

The combination of Vuforia and PTC leverages two transformational technology trends – Internet of Things (IoT) and augmented reality (AR) – to deliver a new class of products that merge the digital and physical worlds. When coupled with PTC’s IoT and analytics platforms, Vuforia unlocks a world of possibilities for creating new ways to design products, to monitor and control products, and to instruct operators and technicians in the appropriate methods of use and service.

“PTC continues to pursue a strategy of providing an incredibly innovative technology platform that customers can use to capitalize on the emerging Internet of Things (IoT),” said PTC CEO Jim Heppelmann (above). “Because of what IoT is enabling, more and more products are now a mixture of digital and part physical content. So, naturally, the ways in which we interact with these products will evolve toward a mixed-reality model that blends physical and digital interactions. “

“By delivering powerful computer vision functionality through a simple API, the Vuforia platform has enabled developers and leading brands to deliver award-winning experiences to consumers around the globe,” said Jay Wright, Vice President of Vuforia, Qualcomm Connected Experiences, Inc. “Vuforia has also captured the attention of industry leaders who envision the potential for augmented reality to transform work. As part of PTC, Vuforia will allow developers to realize this potential through integration with PTC’s industry leading applications and ThingWorx IoT platform.”

Vuforia has wide adoption from leading companies including 37 of the Interbrand 100 and has consistently been awarded for its performance, robustness, and ease of use, including “Best Tool” at Augmented World Expo in each of the last three years. Vuforia supports multiple developer tools, including Eclipse, xCode, and Unity and runs on multiple operating systems and devices, including iOS and Android phones, tablets, and selected mobile eyewear.

“We are pleased with the prospect of adding the market-leading AR technology platform, together with its large developer community, to our technology portfolio. Vuforia will accelerate our leadership position helping companies to fundamentally change the way their products are created, operated, and serviced,” added Heppelmann. “We are excited about leveraging Vuforia’s technology leadership in the consumer market while unleashing the Vuforia capabilities into the enterprise. We look forward to welcoming the Vuforia team to PTC.”

Vuforia annual revenue is currently not material to PTC financial results. As a result of cost synergies and investment plans, PTC does not expect Vuforia to impact its FY’16 non-GAAP EPS. The transaction is expected to close by the end of calendar year 2015, subject to customary closing conditions.

Source: PTC

IDC Report Praises Eurotech – Red Hat Approach

9 October 2015 – A new report by IDC, sponsored by Red Hat provides new data on the European IOT market and advises end users on implementing IOT projects.

The report stresses the importance of middleware, citing the latter (along with platform as a service (PaaS))  as frequent sources of project failure and advises organisations to consider the potential advantages of open standards.

The report and endorses the Eurotech-Red Hat partnership approach and quotes the insightful Roberto Siagri President and CEO  of Eurotech (right) several times. You can read the full report here:

How Eurotech is Tackling Middleware Requirements in the Internet of Things Era

Eurotech Enables Large-scale IoT/M2M Remote Device Management

8 October 2015 – Eurotech, a leading supplier of embedded, M2M and IoT technologies, today announced another major step forward in Remote Device Management by Everyware Cloud™ 4.1, their M2M/IoT Integration Platform.

Everyware Cloud™ is a Machine-to-Machine Integration Platform that simplifies device and data management by connecting distributed devices over secure and reliable cloud (and on-premise) services. Once devices are deployed, the Everyware Cloud™ allows users to connect, configure and manage devices throughout the lifecycle, from deployment through maintenance to retirement.

Everyware Cloud 4.1 extends the features required for over-the-air device software updates to support large-scale M2M / IoT deployments. When scheduling and executing updates for several hundreds or thousands of devices, timing, network bandwidth and hardware resources quickly become an issue. EC 4.1 introduces a new device-software-update process for faster large-scale updates especially effective with devices that require the transmission of large file sets. This is made possible by new EC4.1 features, including device job execution on reconnection, large-device-software-updates, scheduled jobs and support for incremental device-software updates.

“It is the experience we have gathered in projects requiring software maintenance on a large scale in the field that is reflected in this latest release of Everyware Cloud 4.1” comments Andrea Ceiner, Product Marketing Manager for the M2M/IoT portfolio of Eurotech (above). “The software life cycle management of deployed devices is a substantive part of the total cost of ownership of M2M/IoT infrastructures.“

Everyware Cloud cuts the time-to-market and permits customers to go live with their IoT Solutions in just a few months. Customers can select the business model that better fits their needs, choosing between a Platform-as-a-Service and a Platform-as-a-License, on a public Cloud Infrastructure (IAAS) or on premise. Everyware Cloud has been designed since day one for security, scalability and reliability, to be future-proof and to protect our customers investments, by being based on the most successful and up to date open standards for M2M and IoT, including MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetering Transport). IoT Solutions and Business Software Applications can be easily connected with Devices by a complete set of Everyware Cloud Rest APIs and WebSockets interfaces. All the complexity of the administration of an end-to-end M2M/IoT communication is encapsulated.

To try EC for free for 90 days, please visit  http://www.eurotech.com/en/portal/cloudtrial
For more information about EC, please visit http://www.eurotech.com/en/products/software+services/everyware+cloud+m2m+platform.

About Eurotech
Eurotech is a global company that designs, creates and delivers full Internet of Things solutions, including services, software and hardware to leading systems integrators and enterprises large and small. With Eurotech solutions in place, clients have access to the latest open source and standardized software stacks, flexible and rugged multi-service gateways and sophisticated sensors to bring actionable data from the field into business operations.

Working with world-class ecosystem partners, Eurotech delivers on the promise of the Internet of Things either from end to end, or with best in class building blocks, including device and data management, connectivity and communication platform, intelligent edge devices and smart objects following business models that fit today’s business world. Learn more about Eurotech at www.eurotech.com.

Source: Eurotech