IBM also announced the first in a series of IBM Cloud-based, industry-specific IoT services with IoT for Electronics. The service will enable electronics manufacturers to gather data from individual sensors that can be combined with other data for real-time analysis.

The IBM IoT Foundation is a platform upon which a family of fully managed, cloud-hosted offerings on the SoftLayer Infrastructure is built. IoT Foundation makes it simple to derive value from Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

“Deploying IoT technology has to be easy, secure and scalable for it to feel like a natural extension of a company’s business,” said Krisztian Flautner, General Manager, IoT Business, ARM.

“By collaborating with IBM, we will deliver the first unified chip-to-cloud, enterprise-class IoT platform. This will empower companies of any size with a productivity tool that can readily transform how they operate, and the services they can offer.”

The integration between IBM and ARM will allow products powered by ARM mbed-enabled chips to automatically register with the IBM IoT Foundation, and connect with IBM analytics services. This unifies the ARM mbed IoT Device Platform and the IBM IoT Foundation at the point where information gathered from deployed sensors in any connected device is delivered to the cloud for analysis. The IoT connection also enables delivery of actionable events to control equipment or provide users with alerts or other information

This integration can help clients improve engagement, accelerate innovation and enhance operations through connected devices and analysis of the data. Custom hardware built around ARM’s flexible and efficient chip technology and IBM’s leading IoT services for predictive maintenance, better asset performance, operational risk management and managed continuous engineering, can help provide organizations with enterprise-grade tools designed to help them build value from their IoT devices. Original design manufacturers and OEMs – such as Ionics – are already seeing value in the IBM and ARM integration as it assimilates the IBM IoT Foundation at the chip architecture level.

"We're excited to work with IBM because we believe that an effective IoT solution should be built from the ground up – from chipset through services – and is by far the best choice to have a complete end-to-end solution,” said Earl Qua, Vice President of Ionics. “Working with IBM we have tapped into our respective company's expertise to create a platform that is built and customized for the unique nature in which companies are utilizing IoT.”