Soracom Automates Connection of IoT Devices to IBM Watson

Soracom Automates Connection of IoT Devices to IBM Watson

New integration allows even highly constrained devices to connect securely and deliver data to IBM Watson AI.

SORACOM, Inc., the leading provider of cloud connectivity-as-a-service for the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced the release of new integration capability designed to allow direct collaboration with the IBM Watson™ IoT Platform, a fully managed, cloud-hosted service that makes it simple to derive value from IoT devices.

The IBM Watson IoT Platform brings real-time insight to IoT data with powerful AI-based capabilities including Watson Cognitive Analysis, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing.

Soracom’s cloud-native IoT platform provides secure cellular and LPWA connectivity designed for ease of integration with leading cloud services. Beginning today, users of the platform’s SORACOM Beam service will be able to send data directly to devices registered in IBM Watson IoT using MQTT.

Normally, transmission of data from devices to IBM Watson IoT Platform using MQTT Publish requires credentials such as Organization ID, Device Type, Device ID and authentication tokens to be set on the device side. Since this data also needs to be encrypted from the device side for security, devices must have sufficient memory and power to handle both onboard credentialing and the larger data transmissions required for encrypted communication.

SORACOM Beam allows all necessary credentials to be managed in the cloud, with no impact on device resources. MQTT data can be automatically converted to MQTTS, ensuring secure communication with IBM Watson IoT Platform while minimizing data transferred from the device, and devices connected using Soracom can be uniquely identified by IMSI.

By managing settings, permissions, and credentials from the cloud, this integration makes it possible for even highly resource-constrained devices to benefit from the powerful cognitive, analytical and data-management capabilities of the IBM Watson IoT platform.

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