A new IoT platform from Cisco aims to address the early failure rate in enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, offering tools and features to improve success. The Cisco IoT Operations Platform, announced in a Wednesday blog post, addresses connectivity, device control, data delivery, and more.
Given Cisco’s networking expertise, one of the core components of the new platform is helping businesses manage the connectivity involved in an IoT deployment. As more and more devices become connected, they can be difficult to keep track of. But the new platform could help “make it easier to spin-up and maintain huge fleets of connected devices from unified applications,” the release said.
The Cisco IoT Operations Platform is also optimized for Fog Computing—Cisco’s take on edge computing. This speaks specifically to data processing and device control, and where they should happen in the stack, the release said. It’s all about bringing the compute power closest to where the “action” associated with the data is occurring.
The platform also provides tools to help filter and distribute data more efficiently, the release said. This helps the data go to the proper applications.
Cisco’s Threat Defense security solution is also built into the platform as well, the release noted.
As part of its announcement, Cisco alluded to the results of a recent survey it completed with 1,845 business IoT leaders. The company noted that only 26% of IoT projects were considered a success, while the rest died out in proof-of-concept or in the pilot stage.
The top two reasons for this early failure rate were listed as integration complexity and a lack of internal expertise, the release said. Integration can stall a project as businesses are working to connect a host of disparate systems and services. IoT is still a relatively new field, and many teams do not possess the skills to properly leverage the technology.
However, there is a light on the horizon, as 64% of those surveyed said that they were able to take their failures and use them to boost their future IoT projects. Additionally, some 61% said that they had “barely begun to scratch the surface” of how IoT could impact their organization, the release said. And this is what Cisco said the new platform is working to address.
Cisco’s IoT Operations Platform will be generally available later in 2017.
By: Conner Forrest
Source: techrepublic.com
