Ericsson announced this week IoT Accelerator that combines horizontal, feature-rich IoT platforms with Ericsson’s services and a marketplace where customers from sectors such as public safety, utilities, transport and smart cities can connect with partners and monetize their solutions. IoT Accelerator will be offered as a service to enable customers to overcome the barriers of cost and complexity and rapidly develop and deploy new IoT solutions.
The offering will leverage Ericsson’s line of services, including everything from initial setup services to business consulting, application development and maintenance, systems integration and industry transformation services.
Set to be available globally from the end of the third quarter, IoT Accelerator will be available as a service, with the initial focus areas of public safety, utilities, transport and smart cities customers, enabling them to save time and money when developing and deploying IoT solutions.
While the IoT market is developing rapidly, customer engagements require the ability to adapt to local preferences, adhere to specific regional or industry regulatory requirements and enable ecosystem cooperation to develop solutions that can be rapidly brought to market. For this reason, Ericsson will support IoT Accelerator customers with regional business labs that can execute global capabilities locally.
“We believe in empowering organizations to connect people, devices and things as quickly and easily as possible,” said Orvar Hurtig, Ericsson’s head of industry & society. “We will initially focus on public safety, utilities, transport and smart cities customers, continuously adjusting to their needs and feedback, and improving ease of use and delivery speed through a DevOps approach to software development. We deliver these capabilities to our customers via the IoT Accelerator.”
The IoT platforms’ capabilities include data management, billing, device management, connectivity services and analytics. Planned expansion modules include a self-service portal, developer environment and software development kit. IoT Accelerator will leverage the Ericsson Cloud System to support hybrid cloud deployments and meet data sovereignty and security requirements.
All main connectivity standards are supported, and the Accelerator will leverage Ericsson’s Cellular for Massive IoT software solutions, including support for NB-IoT, LTE Cat-M1 and EC-GSM-IoT technologies for low power wide area applications.
The narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) technology is evolving with the intent of providing cost-effective connectivity to billions of IoT devices, supporting low power consumption, the use of low-cost devices, and provision of excellent coverage – all rolled out as software on top of existing LTE infrastructure. The design of NB-IoT mimics that of LTE, facilitating radio network evolution and efficient coexistence with MBB, reducing time to market, and reaping the benefits of standardization and economies of scale.
