Vodafone Group Plc (LON:VOD) and Arm today announced a strategic agreement that will significantly reduce complexity and costs faced by organisations when implementing Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. Expanding on the companies’ previous collaboration around integrated SIM (iSIM) technology, this partnership brings together Vodafone IoT global platform and connectivity, and Arm’s IoT software and services to provide enterprises with programmable, connected system on chip designs that eliminate the need for traditional SIM cards. This allows customers to securely deploy, remotely provision and manage massive numbers of IoT devices across global markets at a significantly lower cost and complexity.
“Fragmentation, security and cost are three limiting factors in IoT, and we believe a strong partner ecosystem is critical in solving these challenges,” said Dipesh Patel, president, IoT Services Group. “This partnership will enable global enterprises to significantly reduce the cost and complexity of securely connecting their IoT devices at scale so that they can quickly drive real value and actionable insights from their IoT data through our Pelion IoT platform.”
“Vodafone has been focused on building its global IoT platform & connectivity, to enable the fast deployment of IoT services,” said Stefano Gastaut, IoT Director, Vodafone. “Working together with Arm, we will combine the strengths of both companies to benefit our customers and break down the barriers, such as cost and complexity, which are hindering the adoption of IoT for many.”
This strategic partnership between Arm and Vodafone enables remote provisioning for devices using Narrow Band-IoT (NB-IoT) and Long Term Evolution for Machines (LTE-M) technologies and provides secure, open, standards-based deployment to any application and service provider across the globe. Arm® Kigen™ iSIM provides anyone deploying IoT devices globally with the means to develop and deploy a single IoT product that can be shipped and connected anywhere in the world. Vodafone’s global IoT network enables organizations to connect IoT devices across the broadest global footprint through the Vodafone IoT platform or the Pelion™ IoT platform.
Arm and Vodafone’s leadership in NB-IoT and LTE-M technologies will unleash the potential of IoT by massively broadening the range of objects that can be connected and unlocking business and societal value. For example, using data from sensors on connected devices will help address challenges in feeding the earth’s growing population by improving yields of agriculture and livestock and reducing chemical and water use. This will also help utilities to more efficiently manage scarce resources such as water, gas and electricity and reduce carbon emissions.
This represents a major step towards enabling a wide ecosystem of device makers that will help businesses to tap into the potential of a trillion connected devices by 2035 and access the vast amount data they provide to drive better business outcomes. Joint solutions from Arm and Vodafone will be available in the first quarter of calendar year 2020.
