IBM is pouring $3 billion into the Internet of things

Hungry for a bigger piece of the Internet of things market, IBM will invest US$3 billion over four years to establish a new business unit dedicated to providing IoT systems and services to enterprises. “We’re only at the very beginning of an amazing revolution. If we thought we were dealing with big data now, we haven’t seen anything yet,” said Erick Brethenoux, IBM director of analytics. IBM General Manager Chris O’Connor will oversee the new unit, which will initially court enterprises in travel, logistics, insurance, public utilities, transportation and retail, Brethenoux said. IBM will also tailor a new cloud service, the IBM IoT Cloud Open Platform, providing a way for enterprises to build their own data-driven systems, Brethenoux said. Over time, it will also develop specialized packages for specific fields like the insurance industry. IBM will offer a customized section of its Bluemix platform service, to be called the Bluemix IoT Zone, where developers will be able to create specialized business logic to handle and analyze data streaming from IoT devices and sensors.