The company said it is simplifying the process to access the tools developers need to create and launch applications with ThingSpace, a new self-service web interface. Having been involved in the IoT for about as long as it’s been around, I’m pretty sure of one thing: a universal networking protocol for the IoT will never exist – and for a good reason! Webofthings.org is the company’s community for developers, researchers, and designers exploring this future. Headquartered in New York, Verizon also provides communications and entertainment services over America’s most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers integrated business solutions to customers worldwide.
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In fact, the company claims an ecosystem of more than 1,000 channel partners and revenue from its IoT and telematics solutions adding up to about $495 million so far this year, meaning that Verizon is saying it already has generated one of the largest amounts of revenue from the IoT of any company in the U.S. “When you look at corporations, those that have deployed IoT solutions, they’re getting double digit improvement in their profitability because they’re cutting costs out and they’re managing their environments at a much faster pace, but they are still underserved by the solutions that are in market”.
Verizon has also created a core IoT network within its LTE architecture optimised for Cat1 devices in order to reduce the cost of connecting IoT deployments to a wide-area network.
The problem with just connecting them to today’s cellular core networks is that they aren’t cost effective for very infrequent connections. And it’s pretty confident that the formula works, since it’s live and ready for all developers to code and test, even if they are not a Verizon customer.
“Despite the exciting potential, IoT is still too complex, too fragmented, too expensive to connect and too hard to scale”, said Mike Lanman, senior vice president Enterprise Products at Verizon. IoT applications will proliferate and many will demand ubiquitous connectivity across multiple networks.
Lanman said ThingSpace, which has been under development at Verizon for more than two years, is a web-based platform designed for developers to have an easy on-ramp on to the IoT. In addition, Shammo pointed to gains Verizon had made in smart city offerings, most recently with the city of Savannah, Ga.
“The cost for an IoT module and the cost to connect will both drop dramatically”, Lanman added.
Last year, Verizon’s annual revenue from the business totaled $585 million.
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As part of the Thingspace launch, Verizon also announced three new smart cities solutions, and a new, dedicated network core and connectivity options for next-gen IoT devices. The news releases are available through an RSS feed.
