BackReliance Group arm, IBM to jointly develop IoT solutions
UNLIMIT, a business venture of Reliance Group and IBM announces a partnership wherein the two companies will jointly develop internet of things (IoT) solutions for specific industry verticals
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Mumbai: UNLIMIT, a business venture of the Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Group and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) on Monday announced a partnership wherein the two companies will jointly develop internet of things (IoT) solutions for specific industry verticals including automotive, insurance, utilities, and industrial automation.
As part of the current collaboration, IBM will provide its Watson IoT Platform to collect and connect data, including sensor data, from devices and provide specific dashboards. Watson is IBM’s artificial intelligence (AI) system that even beat Jeopardy players in 2011.
UNLIMIT will design IoT use cases for various industries in the Indian market and build them on the IBM Watson IoT Platform, which provides device registration, IoT rules, advanced analytics, visualization, dashboards, reports and cognitive capabilities for each use case.
“Currently, India is becoming the hot bed for digital disruption and we believe there is immense scope for innovation. We are confident that our powerful technology platform, with Watson IoT at its core, will provide enterprises with a flexible, scalable and secure solution.’ Juergen Hase, chief executive officer of UNLIMIT, told reporters in Mumbai.
UNLIMIT and IBM are also developing IoT solutions for implementation across Reliance Group companies to addres segments such as User Based Insurance (Reliance General Insurance), Asset and Vehicle Tracking (Reliance Commercial Finance), Tower Monitoring (Reliance Communications) and Transformer Maintenance (BSES and Reliance Energy). Through this collaboration, UNLIMIT will have access to IBM’s global ecosystem of partners.
“With 2.7 billion connected devices and growing, Indian economy, enterprises and consumers are embracing IOT at a rampant pace," said Harriet Green, general manager, Watson IoT, customer engagement and education, IBM. She explained that the collaboration with UNLIMIT is a “significant example" of IBM leading the global IOT movement with a growing ecosystem of clients and partners.
Going ahead, all Reliance Group companies and UNLMIT’s clients will have access to the IBM Watson IoT Platform capabilities via the IBM Cloud.
UNLIMIT was launched on 15 November, 2016, to provide IoT services. The Anil Ambani unit had then announced a tie-up with Cisco Jasper, a company that provides IoT connectivity management platforms. Jasper Technologies was acquired by Cisco Inc. in February 2016. Amitabh Jhunjhunwala, group managing director of Reliance Group, had then said that with UNLIMIT, Reliance had become “the first telecommunications services provider in the country to set up a dedicated and integrated IoT business unit..."
IoT is defined as a worldwide network of “things" that include identifiable devices, appliances, equipment, machinery of all forms and sizes with the intelligence to seamlessly connect, communicate and control or manage each other to perform a set of tasks with minimum intervention. The goal of IoT is to enable things to be connected any time, any place, and with anything or anyone. IoT is not a single technology, but a concept.
IoT has started being incorporated into both consumer and industrial applications being utilized in critical verticals like healthcare, automotive and manufacturing. The ecosystem is rapidly expanding, owing to demand for both Industrial and Consumer IoT applications. The IoT market in India stood at $5.6 billion with 200 million connected units in 2016. It is estimated to touch $15 billion by 2020, representing around 5% of the total global market, according to software lobby body, Nasscom. The global IoT market is expected to grow to over $3 trillion in the same period.
The government of India’s department of electronics and information technology (DeitY) released the first IoT policy framework proposal for India, in October, 2014. This policy document related to the IoT framework is part of the broader ‘Digital India’ vision shared by the central government. The government envisions creating a market of $15 billion by 2020 in India, increasing connected devices from the current 200 million to 2.7 billion by 2020.
Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.
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