ThingWorx has been chosen by Japan’s largest mobile operator NTT DOCOMO to power its new M2M (machine to machine) cloud system. With help from Nippon Systemware, ThingWorx (recently acquired by PTC) will bring its IoT connectivity experience to the Japanese MNO.
The new M2M offering is called Toami. NTT hopes that customers from a variety of industries will be able to quickly deploy M2M operations over the NTT national network that serves 63 million 3G and 4G customers.
M2M systems allow businesses to automate and monitor their operations remotely. Nationwide cellular coverage should guarantee communications across Japan are delivered and received. NTT has outlined its reasons for choosing ThingWorx for Toami.
NTT DOCOMO executive director of M2M business development Yasuo Ichiya said that ‘we chose to work with ThingWorx and NSW so that we can provide our customers with a one stop source of innovative and easy to deploy device, network and M2M cloud solutions.’
He added that as ‘Toami is powered by ThingWorx, a non-programming platform, it can be implemented more quickly and inexpensively that conventional M2M cloud services which often require significant programming skills.’
ThingWorx president Russ Fadel said that ‘NTT DOCOMO’s decision signals the beginning of the next generation of M2M, one focused on making it easy for partners and customers to build and deploy complete M2M solutions, enabling rapid application development that catalyzes innovation and speeds adoption of M2M.’
The ThingWorx partner ecosystem offers a wide range of applications, pre-integrated software components, and skills providing the necessary building blocks required to rapidly design, build, deploy and manage IoT and M2M applications. Comprised of components that are built by ThingWorx, ThingWorx partners, third party developers, and independent hardware and software vendors, these offerings add value to all members of the IoT/M2M value chain by delivering the technology, tools and expertise to implement IoT solutions.
ThingWorx is an application enablement platform (AEP ‘ its own words). It lets users quickly build applications that synchronize the remote sensors and devices that they have deployed. This intends to ‘extend the value of your remote devices by rapidly layering applications that leverage the activities, services, and inter-relationships not only of the devices, but all people, systems and devices in the network ‘ which continuously evolves over time.’
Basically, ThingWorx offers an SDK with pre-composed apps that can be combined by a developer to create the desired product. The data gathered can then be used to analyze performance make adjustments. In fact, as most industrial processes have been automated over the course of the past two decades, the real value of a system like this is the collection of data by the sensors.
So Toami is targeting the section of the Japanese market that has not yet embraced the benefits of automation and would appreciate the ease of use that a development kit, or AEP, like ThingWorx will afford them. With that ease of use and the nationwide capability of NTT DOCOMO’s cellular network, it looks like Japanese businesses looking to expand into M2M efficiency will be well served by the incumbent cellco.
NTT DOCOMO was notably absent from the Asia-Pacific Bridge M2M Alliance that was formed in January. The Japanese operator was the M2M market leader in 2012 with 38% market share ahead of rivals Softbank (31%) and KDDI. The NTT system was using Jasper Wireless technology, but there has so far been no word on the state of that deal in the wake of the ThingWorx announcement.