Unleashing Connectivity: How New Intel IoT Platform is Making More 'Things' Smart and Connected

Intel Corporation has announced a new Intel® IoT Platform reference architecture and new hardware and software products as part of its effort to build out one of the most comprehensive offerings for the Internet of Things (IoT) marketplace.

The platform includes two reference architectures and a portfolio of products from Intel and its ecosystem to address the IoT opportunity. The products include new Intel® Quark™ processors for IoT, free and simple operating systems with a comprehensive cloud suite from Wind River, and analytics capabilities, all designed to build and secure smart and connected solutions from things to the cloud.

"Today, Intel further solidifies its position in the IoT and continues to deliver a comprehensive set of building blocks with a strong ecosystem to address the IoT opportunity," said Doug Davis, senior vice president, IoT Group at Intel. "Intel is making it easier for our customers to scale from things to cloud with new Intel Quark processors for IoT and Wind River's free cloud-connected OS for microcontrollers."

Intel is working with a variety of companies across market segments to scale from a proof of concept to pilot to deployments. Levi Strauss & Co. collaborated with Intel and implemented a proof of concept for the Intel IoT Platform to address inventory management in three of its stores. The proof of concept allows the Levi's stores to gain visibility into what's on the shelf or what might be running low, making the process of inventory management more effective, so when the consumer comes in looking for that exact size and color jeans, it's on the shelf.

IoT Made Easy

The new Intel IoT Platform reference architecture for smart and connected things is focused on enabling the broad Intel ecosystem to simply develop, secure and integrate smart things.

The platform provides a blueprint for delivering innovations to market faster by reducing complexity and defining how smart devices will securely connect and share trusted data to the cloud. The first company to announce IoT solutions based on the new Intel IoT Platform is SAP, which will develop its IoT enterprise end-to-end solutions utilizing the Intel platform along with its SAP HANA Cloud Platform.

New Silicon for Smart Connected Things

Intel's addition of Intel Quark processors for IoT provides low-power silicon for intelligent things. The Intel® Quark™ SE SoC and the Intel® Quark™ microcontroller D1000 and D2000 feature powerful processing in an energy-conscious envelope. The new products are in an ideal package for IoT, offering extended temperature for demanding environments and have long life reliability for peace of mind. The Intel Quark SE SoC for IoT offers an integrated sensor hub as well as pattern matching technology to deliver real-time insights from complex sensor data at the very edge of IoT.

To collect data on everything from space utilization to lighting usage in an office building, Yanzi*, a smart building provider, is using the new Intel Quark SoC to develop the Yanzi Plug* and Yanzi Motion*. The plug is an energy monitoring sensor that enables optimized energy use based on space utilization and predictive maintenance in smart buildings, in addition to providing analytics at the edge and in the "thing." The solution results in decreased operating expenses and total cost of ownership of IoT systems in smart buildings.

Honeywell* demonstrated a prototype of its connected worker solution featuring Intel Quark technology. The industrial wearable helps monitor the environments of mission-critical workers like first responders, industrial workers and firefighters. It demonstrates how the integration of data from multiple workers can anticipate unsafe conditions and prevent potential "man-down" scenarios or equipment failures that could threaten worker safety and cause costly downtime.

The Intel Quark microcontroller D1000 is available today, while the Intel Quark microcontroller D2000 will be available by the end of this year. The Intel Quark SE SoC for IoT will be available in the first half of 2016.

Free Software from Things to Cloud

The new offering from Wind River is designed to help makers and commercial developers simplify and accelerate IoT application and device development, with the ability to start building applications in 10 minutes. A critical part of the Intel IoT Platform, it includes free cloud-connected multi-architecture operating systems, Wind River Rocket and Wind River Pulsar Linux, and a comprehensive cloud suite of software-as-a-service (SaaS) products.

From makers to commercial developers, the "things to cloud" solution opens IoT device development to a wide range of individuals who want to participate in the IoT opportunity. It also offers customers a path to commercialization – from experimentation to development to full commercial deployments. With its latest offering, Wind River not only grows its presence in the cloud, but further extends its OS footprint to MCUs.

Unleashing the Value of IoT with Analytics

The value of IoT is truly realized when new insights are revealed from the massive volume of data generated by smart and connected things. A key ingredient to the new Intel IoT Platform is the Trusted Analytics Platform (TAP), which helps make data actionable and can be integrated in an end-to-end IoT solution. Designed for developers and data scientists, TAP is the ideal platform for a range of industries such as healthcare, retail and industrial. It integrates with the Intel IoT Platform reference architecture for data management, protocol abstraction, workload distribution and compute.

Levi Strauss & Co. can now use TAP to gain near real-time inventory insights that help improve accuracy in data collection to deliver an enhanced in-store experience to shoppers. Honeywell is using TAP in its connected worker solution for industrial safety to improve real-time decision-making.