Intel Unifies and Simplifies Connectivity and Security for IoT

Announces Platform, Products and Expanded Company Ecosystem Designed to Accelerate Adoption and Innovation

Intel Corporation announced the Intel IoT Platform, an end-to-end reference model designed to unify and simplify connectivity and security for the Internet of Things (IoT). Intel also introduced integrated hardware and software products based on the new platform and new relationships with an expanded ecosystem of system integrators that promise to move IoT from infancy to mass deployment.

The new offerings and relationships reportedly will make it easier for solution providers to move IoT from pockets of pilots to mainstream deployments with a repeatable foundation of building blocks that can be customized for limitless solutions. Data will be unlocked faster to extract meaningful information and value for consumers and businesses.

Horizontal Approach to IoT
The Intel IoT Platform reportedly helps deliver innovations to market faster, reducing solution complexity, and delivering actionable intelligence faster by offering a defined, repeatable foundation for how devices will connect and deliver trusted data to the cloud.

Expanding IoT Ecosystem
IoT has enormous potential to drive economic value and social change, but no company can do it alone. A robust ecosystem is needed to scale. To that end, Intel announced new solutions and relationships to boost the IoT ecosystem. Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, Dell, HCL, NTT DATA, SAP, Tata Consultancy, Wipro and others are joining together with Intel to develop and deploy solutions using their building blocks on the Intel IoT Platform. These solutions will help provide a repeatable foundation for IoT and free up developers' time to focus on building solutions that expertly address specific customer pain points.

Integrated Hardware and Software
Intel is also delivering a roadmap of integrated hardware and software products to support the Intel IoT Platform. Spanning from edge devices out to the cloud, the roadmap includes API management and service creation software, edge-to-cloud connectivity and analytics, intelligent gateways, and a full line of scalable IA processors. Security is fundamental to the roadmap with both dedicated security products and security features embedded into hardware and software products.

Intel is evolving and optimizing this product roadmap to work seamlessly together with building blocks from the ecosystem to address the key challenges solution providers are facing when implementing IoT, including interoperability, security and connectivity.

The new products from Intel include:
Wind River Edge Management System provides cloud connectivity to facilitate device configuration, file transfers, data capture and rules-based data analysis and response. This pre-integrated technology stack enables customers to quickly build industry-specific IoT solutions and integrate disparate enterprise IT systems, utilizing API management. The cloud-based middleware runs from the embedded device up through the cloud to reduce time to market and total cost of ownership.

The latest Intel IoT Gateway will integrate the Wind River Edge Management System via an available agent so gateways can be rapidly deployed, provisioned and managed throughout the life cycle of a system to reduce costs and time to market. In addition, the gateway includes performance improvements, support for lower cost memory options and a broader selection of available communication options. Intel IoT Gateways are currently available from seven ODMs with 13 more releasing systems in early 2015.

To get value out of the data generated in deployments using the Intel IoT Platform, developers need a powerful yet easy-to-use approach to big data analytics. Intel is expanding its cloud analytics support for IoT Developer Kits to include the Intel IoT Gateway series, in addition to Intel Galileo boards and Intel® Edison Modules. Cloud analytics enables IoT application developers to detect trends and anomalies in time series at big data scale.

McAfee, a part of Intel Security, announced Enhanced Security for Intel IoT Gateways in support of the Intel IoT Platform. This pre-validated solution adds advanced security management for gateway devices.

Intel Security also announced that its Enhanced Privacy Identity (EPID) technology will be promoted to other silicon vendors. EPID has anonymity properties, in addition to hardware-enforced integrity, and is included in ISO and TCG standards. The EPID technology provides an on-ramp for other devices to securely connect to the Intel IoT Platform.

The Intel API and Traffic Management solution utilizes Intel Mashery solutions to enable creation of building blocks that make it easy to build new software applications. Customers of the Intel IoT Platform today have access to the Intel Mashery API management tools to create data APIs that can be shared internally, externally with partners, or monetized as revenue-generating data services for customers.

Intel Mashery API Management Powering Enterprise IoT Data at Scale
Intel Services is powering an innovative software-defined approach to scaling the Internet of Things (IoT) across the enterprise with Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Announced as part of the Intel IoT Platform reference architecture, Intel's API and Traffic Management solution for IoT leverages the ability of Intel Mashery API Management and Intel Mashery API Gateways for Service Creation/Management to enable enterprises with data platforms on which to scale IoT-enablement simply and securely by creating and managing IoT data APIs with endpoints in the cloud, data centers, as well as externally with developers and partners.

Intel Mashery API Management makes it simple for enterprises to connect IoT data from sensors and machines to more endpoints such as cloud analytics platforms and data centers. Leading IoT innovators, such as Siemens, Brivo Systems and Carvoyant, are using API management powered by Intel to achieve scale in across end-to-end IoT deployments. IoT Data APIs can help improve efficiency, optimize customer experiences and power revenue-generating data services.

Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud, Security, Enhanced Privacy Identity (EPID), ARC Advisory Group.