Pelion, the IoT connected device service provider, is now an independent company with a new brand image and enhanced services. The new Arm subsidiary has over 300 employees covering five continents and a strong leadership team.
In July, Arm said it planned to transfer its IoT services units into a new entity owned and operated by SoftBank as part of a move to focus on its core semiconductor-IP business, CEO Simon Segars said at the time.
Then in September, after the announcement of Arm holdings’ sale to Nvidia, the plan changed, and Arm decided to keep the IoT business under its umbrella. “After further diligence, we have determined that both [the IoT platform] and data can realize the same benefits as independent operating businesses, each with their own P&L (profit and loss), under the ARM Limited umbrella with less operational disruption,” the company said in a statement.
Since the beginning, Arm’s cores have been in use for IoT devices. In 2016, the company launched ARM mbed OS, as an “open-source embedded operating system designed specifically for the ‘things’ in the Internet of Things.”
In October 2018, after the acquisition of Treasure Data and Stream Technologies — combining the managed gateway services for wireless technologies, including cellular, LoRa, and satellite — Arm launched the Pelion IoT Platform SaaS service.
Now, with this announcement, Pelion becomes an independent subsidiary of Arm. The new company already has a customer base of over 500 enterprises using its services.
According to the press release, “Pelion is uniquely positioned to help enterprises realize scaled device connectivity with an agnostic approach that enables IoT for any device regardless of OS, network, and application. This is combined with close industry partnerships that span the full IoT value chain from silicon vendors and device makers to system integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs), mobile network operators, and platform vendors. Pelion’s Connected Device Platform brings together the connectivity and management capabilities needed for scalable deployments, delivering unified operations management for the full device journey. It is designed to facilitate scalable, secure deployments quickly and without complication, supporting both managed and unmanaged connectivity, and deployable across diverse system and device architectures.”
We had the opportunity to talk to Hima Mukkamala, CEO of Pelion, about the new company’s role in the IoT market.
Over the past five years, we see many new services for IoT coming from different companies and sectors, from services such as Microsoft’s IoT Central to managing services from cellular operators and cloud providers. Can you tell us about Pelion’s position in this heavily competitive market?
The ability to scale across multiple clouds is the key differentiation for us; customers have the choice to deploy across Microsoft, Google, Amazon, or private data centers. Furthermore, security is a crucial aspect of differentiation, as enterprises are scared of being liable for data breaches. When we talk about securing the data, we can deliver more confidence because our heritage comes from the device side, and we understand the lifecycle of managing that.
Since the Arm acquisition by Nvidia was announced, we notice some speculation about the integration of technologies. How do you see Nvidia technology affecting your offerings and the global IoT market?
Our focus on Pelion as a company is that we are independent of silicon, and the customer has a choice of different [hardware] for their applications. That is one of the reasons that we made a strategic choice to be independent. So, if our customers choose to use Arm, Nvidia, or any other silicon, we can serve them.
Pelion provides:
- Connected Device Platform that fast-tracks connectivity requirements at project conception reduces total cost of ownership and scales to meet future requirements.
- Enhanced processing at the edge with application management for third-party and legacy applications.
- Versatile connectivity options to suit a range of use cases, from 5G to 2G, including CAT-M and NB-IoT networks, as well as non-cellular connectivity standards, including Wi-SUN.
- Services and expertise that already enable over 500 organizations.
- Flexibility to address small, consumer price point form factors with low power connectivity needs through industrial-grade equipment that demands increased security and data bandwidth.
Hima Mukkamala concluded by saying, “This is an exciting milestone for the business, bringing together a team with a deep heritage of device, security and network expertise. We will work with our established customer base and mature partner network as we continue on our mission to simplify the full device journey and provide a robust, secure foundation for IoT innovation.”
Leave a Reply
You must Register or Login to post a comment.