CHICAGO, Oct. 15, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AGT International, a global pioneer in the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced it will launch IoTA, a modular, open, cloud-based platform for IoT application developers that delivers IoT-specific analytics, data management and visualization capabilities. IoTA powers a number of IoT offerings built by AGT, and by making the platform available to other developers, AGT will enable a much wider variety of IoT solutions and accelerate the adoption of IoT technology.
Unveiled at the Internet of Things World Forum 2014, the IoT analytics platform enables the easy incorporation of ready-to-use analytics for data that originates from a diversity of endpoints and business areas. The explosion of IoT data and the specific nature of this sensor/device-generated data are intensifying demand for specialized IoT analytics to finally unlock the true potential of the IoT. Available to selected developers now and planned for wider availability in the second half of 2015, IoTA addresses a gap in the industry, with existing, traditional analytics tools unable to handle and integrate the complexity of real-world IoT data.
The cloud-based platform provided through IoTA is built on five years of AGT experience in implementing complex solutions comprising a wide array of sensors, IoT devices and advanced analytics to improve lives and operations around the world by transforming traffic management, environmental monitoring, infrastructure management, energy monitoring, public safety and many other industry-specific projects. The IoTA team brings together industry veterans and experts in data science, IoT and cloud-based services.
"We have spent years at AGT helping cities to operate more efficiently and safely, water infrastructure to be better managed, traffic to flow smoother, energy facilities and oil and gas sites to be better protected and connected, to cite just a portion of our successful track record. With the creation of IoTA, we're leveraging our significant analytics expertise and IoT deployment experience to address a whole new set of challenges across many different industries," said AGT CEO Mati Kochavi. "The IoT will create huge amounts of new data that is drastically different to the data used today. To make sense of it and unlock the potential of the IoT, we'll need analytics that are unique to IoT data."
IoT data is much more difficult to analyze than typical enterprise-generated big data because of factors related to the disparity of data sources, geographic distribution of endpoints, sensor "noise" and failures and the resulting imperfections in the collection and streaming of the data that could render it unusable without significant analytics. AGT's IoTA offers developers a set of powerful components to help connect, manage, analyze, and visualize IoT data in real-time.
Industry analyst firm Gartner has commented on the size and complexity of the IoT data challenge: "IoT creates a big data problem that analytics must solve — transform huge volumes of data into a small (readily synthesized by a human mind) quantity of usable/actionable information," wrote analyst Peter Middleton, Research Director.
Capitalizing on AGT's strong experience in sensor-based data, IoTA addresses this complexity by offering analytical components, which are aware of IoT data types and their challenges, and match analytical capabilities to specific data types and data contexts. Applications built on these analytics offer the end customer better predictions, optimized business processes and more efficient operations. Previously, such capabilities required significant in-house expertise and were expensive and time-consuming for IoT application developers. IoTA offers an affordable and rapid alternative and lowers the barrier to entry for potential IoT applications.
"Thanks to the rapid deployment capabilities of IoTA, customers in several industries are already benefiting from AGT's analytics-rich IoT applications. These new applications are transforming the enterprises using them – optimizing their business processes, delivering operational savings and generating new revenue streams," said Wayne Hull, AGT Senior Vice President, Global Sales & Partnerships.
IoTA encapsulates best practices and unique capabilities in data management and analytics into modular components such as data input and processing, secure storage and access, sensor management, data fusion, activity recognition, location and motion analysis, anomaly detection, behavior analytics, event handling, optimization, simulation and what-if analysis and visualization – and makes them available through the cloud so developers can easily access the different modules and experiment with the technology.
The need for a platform like IoTA across a range of business areas and industries has been reinforced by several IoT pioneers, including Dr. Hans-Arno Jacobsen, an Alexander von Humboldt-Professors at Technische Universtät München.
"IoTA definitely lowers the barrier to entry for the data scientist and for building effective IoT solutions," Jacobsen said. "It empowers developers to design better solutions, faster and more reliably. We'd love to get our hands on the IoTA platform and use it for building IoT applications and middleware-backed IoT application systems."
As part of the announcement today, AGT also introduced new applications powered by IoTA to address challenges in efficient port operations, smarter site and risk management, and law enforcement:
• SmartPort is a barge identification and tracking application that improves port and shipping operations through the use of smart tags, port-wide WiFi coverage and real-time locating systems (RTLS) embedded across barge fleets, which typically contain none of this intelligence today. The continuous stream of data feeds IoTA's powerful cloud-based analytics for motion analysis, pattern learning and anomaly detection, to benefit the entire port ecosystem. Barge operators can operate more efficiently while ports increase their throughput of goods and regulators get increased visibility into port operations.
• The O&G Pro application for extractive industries improves site operations management and safety through the use of sensors embedded across production facilities and vehicles. This IoT solution helps identify, monitor, analyze and visualize data not previously available in real time. Using IoTA's object identification and tracking, route optimization and predictive analytics generates insights that reduce theft, save money, improve daily operations, reduce potential inaccurate tracking and billing of materials, and enhances safety of operations.
• StreetSmart keeps patrolling police officers better connected and informed by using wearable sensors, social media inputs and real-time data analytics to give them the latest intelligence on what's happening on the streets. The solution leverages AGT's cloud-based data analytics to learn an officer routine behavior, fuse data from multiple sensors and automatically identify abnormal events enabling the instant sharing of information with all officers on patrol in a city. It also automates the data collection required for the paperwork required by officers. The IoTA powered solution helps patrol officers be more efficient, increases their safety and maximize their time for visible policing.
In the next twelve months, AGT plans to release additional IoTA-based applications for healthcare, manufacturing and supply chain management.
For more information, visit http://www.agtinternational.com