Toshiba Corporation and Cisco has announced that they are collaborating on new ways to utilise the Internet of Everything that can dramatically improve processes, productivity and experiences in manufacturing, transportation and city environments.
Representatives from Toshiba and Cisco signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) this week with the intention to advance the progress of a new Smart Community.
Growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) market has accelerated dramatically in the past year throughout a wide range of industries and public sector organisations. The Internet of Everything (IoE) connects people, processes, data and things through the Internet, turning data generated from connected devices into actionable intelligence that can improve processes, decision-making and scenario planning for businesses and people. The Internet of Everything also is creating a greater need for fog computing, which stores and processes data at physical locations closer to devices and operations – or the edge – instead of handling all processes in the cloud.
This global collaboration brings together the Cisco Fog Computing network environment featuring Cisco’s network-wide security solution with the Toshiba Group’s endpoint management technology. The joint effort will help monitor and maintain multiple devices, stream computing technology for high-speed information processing collected from devices, and provide storage technology to accumulate information generated with M2M technology. Through this process, Cisco and Toshiba will explore the feasibility of technological verification, marketing activities, and the provision of solutions for promoting widespread use of fog computing.
Toshiba seeks to generate new value by connecting its energy, health care, storage products and services using cloud computing, big data and analytics technologies, with the goal of creating a Human Smart Community: a safe, secure, and comfortable society. By combining cloud technologies with the IoT, M2M, and fog computing, Toshiba will apply the Human Smart Community to a wider range of devices and spread it to manufacturing systems, traffic/transportation systems, and smart cities.
To allow customers to make maximum use of the opportunities for value generated by the IoT and IoE, Cisco believes that a new approach to infrastructure optimised for many distributed sensors and data processing is critical. Cisco is also encouraging fog computing architecture, in which new networking, computing, and storage for value generation in the IoT era are deployed from the cloud to the edge. To expand the market for this technology, Cisco will promote innovation with its strategic ecosystem partners.
“The importance of fog computing is expected to increase for managing many devices in the cloud,” said Hironobu Nishikori, corporate senior vice president and president and CEO of Cloud & Solutions Company, Toshiba Corporation. “We believe a synergistic convergence of Toshiba’s advanced device management technologies and Cisco’s rich expertise in networking will open up ways to provide outstanding excellence in the ever-growing field of the M2M/IoT.”
“Our relationship with Toshiba is expected to strengthen the technology foundation for the Internet of Everything, ensuring fast, reliable and valuable outcomes for our mutual customers in both the public and private sectors,” said Wim Elfrink, Cisco EVP of industry solutions and chief globalisation officer. “The powerful combination of Cisco’s and Toshiba’s information technology leadership will be one more key accelerator in the rapidly growing Internet of Everything market and its critical ecosystem.”
