Hima Mukkamala, senior vice president and general manager of Arm’s Internet of Things (IoT) Cloud Services Group, wants to establish its long-term sustainability in the ever-changing IoT space.
Just a few months into his appointment at Arm, the United Kingdom-based semiconductor and software design company concluded two acquisitions – namely of Stream Technologies, a connectivity management firm, and Treasure Data, a data management firm, in June and August of 2018 respectively.
Both investments will bolster Arm’s IoT solutions offerings, said Mukkamala in a phone interview. He noted that Stream and Treasure Data are being integrated with the company’s device management service to deliver an end-to-end IoT connectivity, device and data management solution – Arm’s Pelion IoT Platform.
The Pelion IoT Platform will enable companies to seamlessly and securely connect and manage IoT devices and data at any scale. It will do this through secure and consistent IoT device provisioning, management of a plethora of wireless connectivity standards, and organization of IoT and non-IoT data for business insights.
This will ultimately allow Arm’s customers to interpret all the data collected from IoT devices, co-mingle that data with other available enterprise and third-party data to make better informed executive decisions. The Pelion IoT Platform forms a key business driver for Arm, in addition to its processor design IP and software development units.
“One of the trends driving the world of IoT is getting business insights from all of the data. At the end of the day, amid the connectivity, device, and data management, what value would customers get? In some businesses, it could be increasing production levels. In other cases, it could be making customer service better, or reducing downtime,” he said.
Founded in 2000, Stream is a leading connectivity management technology provider, that maintains more than 770,000 managed subscribers and 2 terabytes of average traffic per day. Devices on Stream can self-authenticate and connect to the lowest cost network available to them, removing the integration complexity of multiple systems. Companies using Stream can reduce the time, complexity and costs of connecting devices and creating impactful data streams.
Treasure Data is a global leader in enterprise data management, which aggregates and translates massive volumes of scattered and siloed data from any source, whether it’s e-commerce systems, IoT devices, internal enterprise data, or external third-party data.
Ensuring security throughout a trillion devices
Arm projects a trillion connected devices by 2035. This calls for a robust and secure solution that will fend off any hacks or threats as enormous amounts of potentially sensitive data becomes available.
“All of this data is meaningless if it doesn’t come from a trusted and managed environment,” said Mukkamala. “Data needs the right type of secure storage. If it doesn’t happen, the business insights don’t matter because you can’t trust the data,” he continued.
With the surge in devices giving rise to potential friction from compatibility issues, Arm needs its partners to work together in what it calls a “shared value chain”. Partnerships and innovation need to come together to bridge any gaps, and this must happen throughout the IoT space, said Mukkamala.
At the end of the day, customers need their solutions simply and seamlessly, which is a massive work-in-progress. “If you don’t enable this shared mindset, you cannot grow the IoT market,” he said.
With that, the first-time presenter at this year’s TechInnovation, to be held on 18 and 19 September at Marina Bay Sands, will be sharing how Arm drives innovation within the IoT industry. He will also be on the lookout for collaboration opportunities at the annual event, a leading technology-industry brokerage conference organised by IPI Singapore.
“We are looking for partnerships with mobile operators that have presence in different regions, so customers don’t have to worry about connectivity”, he said.
Arm is also soliciting collaborations with independent software vendors, who will create web and mobile applications for its clients. These software vendors can leverage the data collected from client IoT networks and build interfaces that are relevant to requirements.
“We are looking to partner with valued resellers who can reach a larger volume of customers, as well as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to help us create end-to-end solutions. If enterprises want to get into IoT, they spend a lot of time figuring out compatible devices. We want to accelerate that by partnering with OEMs,” he noted.