IBM Starts New Internet of Things, Education Business Units
Last week IBM announced that Deborah DiSanzo – formerly of Philips Healthcare – would be general manager of the Watson Health unit, and the company says that it will be creating a separate division to focus on education in the coming months.
IBM says the automotive solution, available on IBM Cloud’s SoftLayer infrastructure, “provides driver, vehicle and environmental insights through analytics” by tapping vehicle sensors and geolocation data collected in cars.
“By combining data directly from the auto with other sources, the insights derived through the IBM IoT for Automotive solution have the potential to change how we interact with our vehicles moving forward”. This could unify the ARM mbed IoT Device Platform and the IBM IoT Foundation at the point where information gathered from deployed sensors in any connected devices is delivered to the cloud for analysis.
The company also appointed Harriet Green, the former CEO of Thomas Cook Group in the United Kingdom, to lead the new division.
She was named Leader of the Year 2013 in the United Kingdom National Business Awards, as well as the Sunday Times Business Leader of the Year 2013. The tech giant said she was selected based on her success transforming the business of her previous employer – efforts that earned her several accolades in England, including the Order of the British Empire.
“Since 2008, IBM has helped thousands of customers embrace the Internet of Things – to help cities become smarter, hospitals to transform patient care and financial institutions to improve risk management”, said Pat Toole, General Manager, Internet of Things, IBM. Earlier in her career, she was CEO and executive director of Premier Farnell, a high-service distributor of technology products and solutions for electronic system design, maintenance and fix.
IBM is acquiring StrongLoop, Inc., a software provider, to help developers connect enterprise applications to mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and web applications in the cloud.