ARM Raises the Bar in Internet of Things

Ysterday, ARM announced their Device Server, med Tools, and free OS in hopes of accelerating the Internet of Things movement. ARM aims to streamline the security, manageability, energy-efficiency, and cost-effectiveness by offering their integrated solution.

Their new, IoT-specific, device platform is tailored for use by ARM’s Cortex-M processor based devices coupled with a server-side software product to consolidate resources. Their mbed hardware and software components build an ecosystem to give manufacturers the tools and building blocks necessary for IoT devices and services, making it much faster and cost-efficient to produce. Mbed OS is free for developers, increases productivity by encouraging software reuse, and encourages deployment with existing support to existing chip vendors. It also offers support for key standards such as Bluetooth® Smart, 2G, 3G, LTE and CDMA cellular technologies, Wi-Fi,Thread, TLS/DTLS, HTTP, Lightweight M2M, and more! The mbed Device Server provides the secure server-side technologies that serve as a bridge between the IoT devices’ aggregated data, aptly named “little data,” and the larger cloud frameworks that deploy “big data.” Mbed.org serves as a hub for the existing developers and offers development kits, a repository to host reusable code, documentation, and web-based development tools. It’s already got more than 30 official boards and is hosting over 1 million project builds and 9,000 published projects.

“Deploying IoT-enabled products and services requires a diverse set of technologies and skills to be coordinated across an organization,” said Simon Segars, CEO, ARM. “AR M mbed will make this easier by offering the necessary building blocks to enable our expanding set of ecosystem partners to focus on the problems they need to solve to differentiate their products, instead of common infrastructure technologies. This will accelerate the growth and adoption of the IoT in all sectors of the global economy.”

Mbed aims to make a dent in the slow process that is building compatible hardware and software for integration into the Internet of Things, I’m excited to see where they take this! Their partners include big names like Ericsson, Amtel, Freescale, wot.io, Zebra, and others! Erik Ekudden, the vice president and head of technology strategies at Ericsson Group Function Technology says that “ARM’s mbed platform has the potential to enable thousands, if not millions, of connected applications in Ericsson’s vision: the networked society.”