Telecommunications giant, BT, and multinational Japanese conglomerate Hitachi have joined forces to develop products for IoT. Apparently, the two brands will be bringing their industry experience together on a global basis, combining the cloud and network-infrastructure knowledge of BT, with the Hitachi Lumada IoT platform.
The emerging collaboration was announced at the Hitachi NEXT conference in Las Vegas this year, where the brands commented that the partnership should contribute to better business solutions for consumers across the world, thanks to improved productivity, efficiency, and cost savings.
Where Does the IoT Journey Begin?
While the potential for IoT devices is practically unlimited, BT and Hitachi will be focusing initially on developing predictive maintenance and asset intelligence products for the manufacturing and transportation industries. According to the CEO of global services for BT, Bas Bureger, the partnership will help the telecommunications giant to accelerate IoT innovation around the globe.
Indeed, the IoT expertise that Hitachi can offer, combined with their innovative Lumada platform should offer an ideal opportunity for BT to build out their cloud services, and global infrastructure, with a range of IoT offerings sure to enhance the marketplace.
According to Ryuichi Otsuki, the CEO for Hitachi Vantara, the subsidiary of Hitachi responsible for this collaboration, IoT is a crucial transformation point for the world, bringing together the interests of society, business, and industry like “never before”. For Hitachi, the collaboration with BT should strengthen their offering as they move towards a new stage of product development.
IoT Interest Continues to Grow
Of course, it’s not just BT and Hitachi that have shown their interest in the world of IoT. In fact, engineering company JGC recently announced a collaboration with NEC in January to support IoT developments, while Bosch and IBM got together for an industrial project. In April, robotics company ABB announced their partnership with the AI professionals behind IBM Watson, too.
IoT is quickly emerging as a faced-paced concept within the world of technology, meaning that it’s more important than ever for brands with an interest in the area to start thinking about how they can partner up with other companies that demonstrate an affinity for this type of disruption. After all, it’s often much more effective to lean on the expertise of a company already in IoT, than it is to start developing your own strategies from scratch.
BT have obviously embraced that strategy themselves, creating a partnership that will allow them to stay on top as the industry begins to change.
