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Arm brings Intel, Arduino, myDevices into the Pelion IoT platform ecosystem

By expanding the partner ecosystem for its IoT platform, Arm aims to solve the customer challenges of heterogeneity and fragmentation in the IoT marketplace.
Written by Stephanie Condon, Senior Writer

Arm on Monday is announcing a series of new partnerships that will enhance Pelion, its Internet of Things platform, making it easier for customers to deploy and manage a wider range of IoT devices on the platform.

First, the Peltion Platform can now be used to manage Intel Architecture (x86) platforms, in addition to Arm-based IoT devices and gateways. Next, Arm is partnering with myDevices to make it easier to quickly onboard a wider array of devices. Additionally, Arduino is partnering with Pelion Connectivity Management to enable developers to quickly create and scale cellular IoT designs.

Also: Internet of Things (IoT): Cheat sheet TechRepublic

The Pelion IoT Platform was born out of two recent Arm acquisitions, Treasure Data and Stream Technologies. It offers an end-to-end IoT connectivity, device and data management platform. As Arm has moved further into the IoT business, it's seen its customers run up against challenges presented by fragmentation in the market, which is what the Pelion partnerships aim to address.

"With the combination of these partnerships, we're enabling customers to solve for heterogeneity without deploying multiple solutions," Hima Mukkamala, SVP and GM of IoT Cloud Services at Arm, told ZDNet.

Through Arm's collaboration with Intel, customers can now use Pelion Device Management with the Intel Secure Device Onboard (SDO) service. This will let end users manage heterogeneous devices on the Pelion platform without having to worry about whether they're secure. Organizations will be able to manufacture devices without any knowledge of end customer-specific onboarding credentials, or even which application framework the end user will choose.

"This becomes much more relevant as we get to a more dynamic supply chain in the IoT space where OEMs make assets comprised of modules from various manufacturers and then distribute that to different geographies," Mukkamala said.

In another move that should extend the array of devices on the Pelion platform, Arm is introducing Mbed Linux OS. This builds on Arm's existing open source operating system for microcontroller IoT devices, Mbed OS. There are already more than 350,000 developers using Mbed OS.

Mbed Linux OS will enable the development and management of IoT devices based on Cortex-A. This will allow for faster time-to-market for complex applications, such as those processing video or edge gateways.

Arm doesn't require the use of its operating systems on Pelion. "Fundamentally, it's all about flexibility to customers," Mukkamala said. However, he added, "We believe it's important to have an end-to-end solution to simplify that lifecycle of deployment."

The developer preview of Mbed Linux OS will be available in November.

Also: Older IoT and smart home gadgets are targets for hackers CNET

Meanwhile, the partnership with myDevices should help accelerate the time to value that customers see with Pelion, Mukkamala said. MyDevices' "IoT in a Box" offering makes it easy for a SMB or enterprise employee to set up and securely connect a gateway and sensors. Now, customers can combine that offering with Pelion Data Management to quickly start monitoring their devices and bring them to scale.

The partnership with Arduino looks to solve connectivity management problems by offering Pelion Connectivity Management customers the option of a range of global data plans to suit everything from single IoT prototypes to production IoT deployments.

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