WDLabs Enables Internet Of Things For App And Device Developers

WDLabs, a business incubator of storage solutions Western Digital Corporation (WDC), is utilizing its WD My Cloud OS3 device in conjunction wit h the IBM Corp.‘s Internet of Things (IoT) Foundation and the ARM Ltd‘s mbed IoT Device Platform to provide developers a flexible platform to support advanced analytics and data application services.

At the ARM TechCon conference in Santa Clara, CA, WDLabs has demonstrated a proof-of-concept on how the My Cloud OS 3 SDK provides an platform for developing applications at the edge. In addition, IoT sensor data may be stored and analyzed when integrated with the ARM mbed IoT Device Platform and IBM IoT Foundation. Ultimately, knowledge gained from analysis of multiple data sources can be combined to achieve further insight.

Together the companies create a viable infrastructure for developers to create better and smarter apps that process IoT and video data at the edge. Western Digital, IBM and ARM play three significant roles to enable the development in an end-to-end IoT infrastructure for app and device developers, such as:

Smart sensors: The mbed IoT Device Platform is secure, enables devices to be mass-production ready and offers support for app developers to plug and play sensors;
Data services at the edge: My Cloud OS 3 platform interacts with the mbed IoT Device Platform, hosting data services at the Edge and connecting to data services on the cloud; and
Analyzing the data: IBM real-time, predictive and cognitive analytic services run locally through IBM IoT Foundation platform to better understand the data that IoT devices generate, including video analytics libraries optimized for sending alerts, metadata and deeper analytics.

“Western Digital is enabling inventors and businesses to be more productive, while storing data locally on My Cloud systems,” said Richard E. Rutledge, SVP, marketing, WDLabs. “The My Cloud OS SDK and platform enable app developers to efficiently connect to their apps and run local analytics and metadata.”

Demonstration will address following pain points for app developers in IoT:

Performance: Maintaining data locally provides faster access to more actionable data. By using local analytics, only necessary and relevant video data and metadata need to be sent to the cloud. Local analytics can be run on My cloud OS 3, with complex analytics in IBM IoT Foundation for greater functionality. Latency problems are reduced because users are not sending all of the data set to the datacenter and back. Local data retention also means a user can run edge-based trend analysis on historical data.
Control: Storing data locally allows a user to control what’s shared. Only pre-processed fractions of the data must be transferred to the cloud for more comprehensive analytics.
Cost: storage latency and resource costs are reduced by storing most of the data locally on a My cloud device. Subscription fees are eliminated and bandwidth requirements are lower.
Security: Pre-processed data is encrypted when transferred to the cloud.

The impact of IoT lies in the sheer volume of data generated. More and more of the world’s activity is being expressed digitally by billions of interconnected devices. The resulting data provides businesses with the ability to learn more about their operating environment and to act with the potential of creating new value. IoT is helping businesses better understand and manage very complex systems, such as smart surveillance buildings. According to IDC, 61% of the organizations surveyed by the firm are actively pursuing IoT initiatives (1).

It is estimated from IDC that by 2020, IoT spending will rise to $3 trillion and there will be nearly 30 billion IoT devices (2). As IoT sensors generate more and more data at the edge, in systems such as automation and video surveillance for smart homes/buildings, there is not a simple or clear way to save, aggregate and learn from all the data that is being generated.

“As the IoT grows, there is an increased demand for reliable, secure and productive embedded software and web services,” said Zach Shelby, VP marketing, IoT business, ARM. “ARM mbed is providing the building blocks to simplify the creation and deployment of secure and reliable IoT applications at scale. The collaboration with Western Digital and IBM offers mbed developers the key value-add features to enable a full end-to-end IoT infrastructure solution.”

“We are excited about collaborating with both Western Digital and ARM on a real-world example of secure distributed analytics for the Internet of Things,” said John Cohn, IBM Fellow, Internet of Things. “The proof of concept shows how easy it is to link ARM’s mbed devices to IBM real-time analytics by way of Western Digital’s highly secure storage My cloud gateway. Together we are showing how we can efficiently move workloads through a highly secure gateway and obtain real-time insights through a combination of advanced analytics on the edge and in the cloud.”

My cloud SDK Platform:
The My cloud device SDK, based on the Docker open platform technology, ensures developers can easily access and collaborate to create customized experiences. Partners already developing extensions and new features based on the new SDK include Plex and Milestone. To learn more about the My cloud platform for developers.

About WD Labs
WD Labs, a Western Digital organization, is a business growth incubator focused on opportunity identification, early engagement, partnering and market creation. It accomplishes this goal via a disciplined growth process and staffing with a broad range of WD talent and aims to create ecosystem opportunities for both WD and its partners.

(1) IoT Quick Look: Buyer Behavior by Industry and Company Size, IDC, August 2014

(2) MaturityScape Benchmark: Enterprise Mobility in the United States, IDC, May 2015