Dell, Others Make Bold Moves in IoT Market

Dell made a splash in the Internet of Things (IoT) market recently, announcing a $1 billion investment over 3 years to set up a new IoT division of the company and to fund new IoT-specific products, labs, and a partner program. The goal is to prod customers into speeding up the deployment of its IoT projects. This move follows a quiet 2-year period during which Dell honed its strategy. Dell’s new IoT division will be helmed by Ray O’Farrell, executive vice president and CTO at VMware.

Dell Is Not Alone

Others are also pushing hard to drive IoT adoption across multiple sectors, including energy, mining, manufacturing, and smart cities, to name but a few. Some of the other recent IoT-related moves include:

• Apple and General Electric (GE) announced a partnership in mid-October to produce “powerful industrial apps designed to bring predictive data and analytics from Predix, GE’s industrial IoT platform, to iPhone and iPad.” The companies also released a new Predix software development kit for iOS, which developers can use to make their own industrial IoT apps.
• Germany’s Dialog Semiconductor announced its plans to acquire California-based Silego Technology for as much as $306 million in a move to help Dialog fortify its position in the IoT market.
• Also in Germany, business software provider Software AG recently said it would form a new IoT cloud unit in January 2018. It also set up a new strategic alliance with a group of manufacturers that will focus on new industrial applications for IoT and Germany's Industrie 4.0 digitization initiative.
• In Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the vice president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai, launched an IoT strategy aimed at preserving the emirate’s digital wealth and setting the foundation for a smart lifestyle transformation process for its people.

More of these of investments and strategic moves related to IoT are expected as competition heats up among vendors trying to seize early market momentum and as the trend moves well beyond the hype phase. This should be good news for those companies seeking to leverage IoT technologies for their business processes. Customers should derive benefits as IoT solutions vendors invest more in their products, channeling engineering horsepower into solving complex industrial problems. For a window into what the industrial IoT market could look like over the next decade, see Guidehouse Insights’ report, Industrial Internet of Things.