IBM sets aside £2bn for new IoT division ~ lotfi

IBM has confirmed that it will be investing $3 billion (about £2 billion, AU$3.9 billion) in a new division that will focus on the Internet of Things.

The cash pot, to be invested over the next four years, will help Big Blue build a cloud-based open platform that will help its clients and ecosystem partners better "integrate real-time data and insights".

The company claims that only 10% of data generated by "at-the-edge" devices (smartphones, tablets, appliances or connected vehicles) is analysed or followed up, with only two-fifths of it still relevant past the one-second threshold.

Three new solutions have been unveiled by IBM to tackle this issue. An IoT Cloud open platform for industries, a Bluemix PaaS IoT zone and an IoT ecosystem.

That approach sounds very similar to what BlackBerry had announced with its ION project last year.

Like IBM, the Canadian company wanted to offer end-to-end solutions for the IoT market and cash in on the explosion in data generation expected to happen over the next few years.

IBM is trying to reinvent itself as a cloud-first company, moving away from its traditional hardware business as it sold its x86 server business to Lenovo last year and acquired SoftLayer to boost its data centre offering in 2013.