PTC announced Thursday that Elisa, a Finnish vendor of mobile and fixed broadband solutions, will leverage the ThingWorx Internet of Things (IoT) platform for the 2016 Elisa IoT Innovation Challenge. The challenge will run through November, and a winner will be named at Slush 2016 – one of the leading technology startup events in Europe.
The seven challenge participants, selected from a group of global entrants, will use the ThingWorx-powered Elisa IoT platform to build out and prove their ideas for new IoT solutions that address everyday problems in the manufacturing, factory, and agriculture markets. This marks the second consecutive year that the ThingWorx-powered Elisa IoT platform will be used for the competition.
The Elisa IoT Innovation Challenge brings together participants to find solutions for the everyday problems that businesses face, and to create a prototype product or service that solves the problem with the help of IoT. This year, the competition expanded its global reach, receiving 59 proposals from representatives of eight countries.
Seven participants from startups and individual ventures were selected, and will build their prototypes using the ThingWorx-powered development platform, Elisa IoT.
Elisa has used ThingWorx since 2014 to power connected solutions as part of its expanding IoT strategy. ThingWorx offers connectivity, application development, analytics, and open cloud platform components that make it simple to create a connected solution, demonstrate its viability at scale, and measure its potential business value and impact.
“Powering the IoT development capabilities for the Elisa IoT Innovation Challenge further demonstrates how simple ThingWorx makes it to build impactful connected solutions,” said Rob Gremley, president, Technology Platform Group, PTC. “This is another compelling example of the global expansion of ThingWorx as a platform that enables IoT development.”
“We firmly believe that the world will and should move faster than ever before. In business, this translates to being able to turn ideas quickly into prototypes and products. The goal for our competition is to encourage people to dream bigger and take action. The agility of IoT and our agile development platform, powered by ThingWorx, is what makes this possible”, said Markku Hollström, vice president of Elisa’s IoT project.
The initial round of the Elisa IoT Innovation Challenge is currently underway. In early October, the judging panel will select three finalists that will compete in an on-stage product pitch contest at Slush 2016, to be held from Nov. 30 through Dec. 1 in Finland. The winner will receive €50,000 in prize money and additional resources and investment to help deploy its solution.
PTC had in late August announced that VMware has joined the ThingWorx Ready program and will position the ThingWorx Internet of Things (IoT) platform along with its new innovative IoT solutions to create new offerings as part of its IoT strategy. PTC plans to work with VMware to combine VMware’s proven history in device management capabilities with ThingWorx components to enable IoT solution builders to accelerate time to market and create business value.
VMware will combine its new IoT edge software, Liota, and device management capabilities with the ThingWorx rapid application enablement platform and analytics components, enabling a stronger combined offering that is scalable for companies that are building connected device management IoT solutions. By leveraging an offering that combines solutions from PTC and VMware, IoT solution builders stand to accelerate product development and achieve a faster time to market.
