While at the Dell IQT kick off event in New York last month, I learned more about the breadth of Dell’s thinking about the Internet of Things.
It began with morphing embedded computer as a gateway (with memory and processing power and multiple connections).,
Added partnerships.
Added platform (EdgeX Foundry).
But that hardly seemed like something that warranted Michael Dell’s time during his past three Dell World / Dell EMC World keynotes.
Revealing the coming together of the various divisions of Dell Technologies, I learned about VMware Pulse IoT Center, an enterprise-grade Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure management solution that will enable IT and operational technology (OT) teams to have complete control of their IoT infrastructure and things.
Interestingly, the Internet of Things group has been promoted to division stature led by the VMware CTO Ray O’Farrell.
Here are a few details on the Pulse Center.
Solving the problems
Customers have challenges scaling from IoT proof-of-concept to production.
• on-board and manage of thousands to hundreds of thousands of connected devices;
• make sure those devices are working as they are supposed to; and
• keep the devices and data secure.
Dell cites core strengths of device and application management, infrastructure analytics, and security give us the IP and expertise to address these issues with an easy to use, single-pane-of-glass solution to help customers to more efficiently manage, operate, scale and protect their IoT projects from the edge to the cloud.
VMware Pulse IoT Key Features
• Edge Device Management – Support for heterogeneous things and gateways with different hardware, operating systems, and communication protocols
• Real-Time Infrastructure Analytics – Ability to identify anomalies with real-time monitoring and infrastructure analytics
• Sophisticated & Flexible Rules Engine- Ability to granularly define what, where and when things are updated
• Single point console- A single point of monitoring and management for the IoT infrastructure (across private networks comprising of edge systems and connected devices) for both IT and OT users
• OTA updates – Ability to provide over-the-air, real-time updates to all things/gateways no matter how remote the location
• Smart Data Orchestration- Delivery of relevant data where and when it is needed across the edge and in the cloud by integrating into enterprise systems
• Security Across IoT Value Chain- Provides security at thing, network and user level with software updates and NSX and VMware Identity Manager integration
• Visualize thing – gateway relationships- Provides pictorial representation of the topology of the IoT infrastructure – 2 tier or 3 tier – in a parent child relationship diagram
• Highly scalable – Supports hundreds of thousands of edge systems and IoT connected devices such as sensors and actuators.
• On Prem support– Offered as an on-prem solution for deployment flexibility and security. Future versions will also be offered as cloud-hosted.
• Enterprise Integrations- Quick and easy integration with existing server systems through a comprehensive API abstraction layer
Chief Customer Officer
I also met with Jim Ganthier, a Vice President who works in the office of the Chief Customer Officer. OK, there are lots of “Chiefs” running around corporations today. Since I am most interested in technologies and their uses in manufacturing and industrial, I didn’t have lots of questions. It was interesting to see that there is a “voice of the customer” at the executive level of a major corporation. We talked a lot about whether it was difficult for a global technology company to meet the varying privacy requirements found from nation to nation. He assured us that they had the technology to comply.
Chief Marketing Officer
A comment stood out in our conversation with Jeremy Burton, the corporation Chief Marketing Officer. “The last 20 years has seen technology used for efficiency. Now technology is a differentiator.”
Hmm, sounds like what I heard at Emerson. Maybe it’s a meme.
Disclaimer: Dell pays my expenses to its events and an occasional fee for posts. The views are always mine, and they never review before publication.
