The Week In Review: IoT

Deals
Verizon Communications reported acquiring the assets of LQD WiFi LLC, expanding its smart city portfolio; financial terms weren’t revealed. Mike Lanman, senior vice president, Enterprise Products and Internet of Things at Verizon, said in a statement: “LQD’s Palo technology hubs capture Verizon’s vision of delivering citizen engagement experiences by connecting people with their communities while providing critical security, transportation, and wayfinding solutions as well as Wi-Fi capabilities. This transaction uniquely positions us to utilize our unmatched infrastructure, platforms and network at scale to deploy elegant and engaging community technology hubs that connect, inform, inspire, and support people where they live, work, and play.”

Meanwhile, John Stratton, Verizon’s executive vice president and president of operations, said at an investment conference that the company posted $217 million in IoT business revenue during the third quarter, a 24% gain from a year earlier. “It’s approaching a billion-dollar business,” he added.

Samsung signed a deal to buy Harman, a Tier 1 automotive supplier, for $8 billion. Harman is the market leader in connected car and audio systems, notably embedded infotainment, telematics and connected safety and security. Harman reported sales of $7 billion in fiscal 2016, ended Sept. 30, and has a backlog of $24 billion.

Security
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, along with the Department of Homeland Security, this week issued cybersecurity guidelines for Internet of Things devices. “Securing the Internet of Things has become a matter of homeland security. The guidance we issued today is an important step in equipping companies with useful information so they can make informed security decisions,” said Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Akamai Technologies reports that large distributed denial-of-service attacks of higher than 300 gigabits per second are up 138% this year. “Every couple of years the industry faces what could be considered ‘harbinger attacks,’ where the size and scope of a security event are radically different than what has come before. I believe the industry faced its latest ‘harbinger’ with the Mirai botnet,” Martin McKeay, senior security advocate, said in a statement. Akamai also predicts that there will be a rise in DDoS attacks during the year-end holidays.

Cloud Services
Oracle this week offered a new packaged integration between Oracle Service Cloud and Oracle IoT Cloud, debuting its IoT Accelerator, an open-source integration. Denon + Marantz testified to the Oracle Service Cloud’s IoT integration capabilities. “The Internet of Things is fundamentally changing the way consumers interact with brands and in the process, it is creating volumes of data that organizations can leverage to transform the customer experience,” Meeten Bhavsar, senior vice president, Oracle Service Cloud, said in a statement, adding, “By delivering a packaged integration between Oracle Service Cloud and Oracle IoT Cloud, we are able to accelerate the time to value, while lowering the complexity of IoT projects. For brands, this also means they can easily take advantage of IoT data and make it actionable across engagement channels to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.”

Connectivity
Sigfox is teaming with SqwidNet, a DFA subsidiary, to offer its service in South Africa, which would be the 26th country with the Sigfox IoT network. Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, and Pretoria will initially get Sigfox, followed with full national coverage by 2018.

Orange Belgium is implementing new dedicated low-power wide-area layers on its 4G network to enable Internet of Things applications. The telecom’s existing 4G network covers nearly the entire nation. The company will invest in two mobile IoT technologies, narrow-band IoT and LTE-M. Orange Belgium’s mobile IoT network will be launched for testing during the first six months of 2017, with commercial availability in the second half of next year.

Products
Tapestry Solutions unveiled its Enterprise Sensor Integration software platform for Internet of Things applications. The Boeing subsidiary’s ESI offering will provide a standard infrastructure for data and analysis. “ESI will not only give businesses a competitive advantage, it will also accelerate industry innovation around the globe. We’re proud to be part of this IoT sensor revolution,” Jens Pohl, Tapestry’s vice president of engineering, said in a statement.

Icon Labs introduced the Floodgate IoT Security Toolkit. This is said to enable IoT edge devices to be securely integrated with IoT platforms, such as Verizon’s ThingSpace IoT Cloud Platform.