Samsung Introduces IoT Cloud Platform to Connect Devices and Applications

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. introduced last week the Samsung Artik Cloud, an open data exchange platform designed to connect devices and applications. The Artik Cloud provides open APIs and tools to securely collect, store and act on any data from connected devices or cloud services. Using these APIs and tools, companies should be able to bring new IoT solutions and services to market, tap into new revenue streams and grow their businesses.

With Gartner forecasting a steady rise in the IoT, from 6.4 billion devices in 2016 growing to 20.8 billion by 2020, multiple companies are focusing their newest developments on this target, such as Microsoft, IBM, Intel and now Samsung. The Artik Cloud is a direct answer to Microsoft’s Azure and IBM’s Bluemix.

The Artik Cloud, along with the previously announced Samsung Artik family of integrated IoT modules, aims to enable faster and simpler development of new enterprise, industrial and consumer applications. The Artik modules and Cloud are an open platform including a family of integrated production-ready modules, advanced software, development boards, drivers, tools, security features and cloud.

“Our vision for the Artik platform is an end-to-end experience that reduces the obstacles, challenges and time-to-market for IoT solutions,” said Young Sohn, president and chief strategy officer, Samsung Electronics. “We’re excited to announce the Samsung Artik Cloud after three years of development and feedback from hundreds of developers. Unlike many other IoT cloud platforms, Artik Cloud breaks down data siloes between devices and enables a new class of IoT applications and services. The launch of this exciting new platform not only signals Samsung’s foray into the cloud services market but reinforces our belief that, by creating powerful open platforms, we can harness the information generated by IoT to develop new insights and new approaches to address the major global challenges of today and tomorrow.”

Companies face numerous challenges when connecting different devices and cloud services together into unified experiences. These challenges include: collecting data from a diverse set of devices using a variety of protocols; enabling legacy, new and third-party devices and cloud services to interact with each other with minimal effort; storing data from siloed devices in a single location and deriving meaningful insights; managing data security and privacy; and providing developers with easy-to-use APIs and tools.

“As more and more consumer IoT devices are created and brought to market, the need for interoperability becomes paramount as it is the key to creating more compelling and integrated experiences. The need for an open cloud solution that can work with any connected device, and with other cloud services, is critical for broader consumer adoption,” said BK Yoon, president and CEO of Samsung Electronics. “The launch of Artik Cloud is extremely exciting because it promises to not only help Samsung connect our diverse portfolio of products, but also enable other companies to participate in a growing IoT ecosystem.”

The Artik Cloud connects all devices – those powered by its modules as well as by other modules. Using the Artik Cloud, companies should be able to securely collect, store and act on any data from any connected device or cloud service. With open APIs to ingest and query data, and with tools to visualize and act on the data, Artik Cloud looks to empower developers and solution providers to build new innovative IoT apps and services.

The Artik Cloud is scalable, with an architecture designed to support the growth of IoT devices expected in the next few years, while keeping latency low to enabling fast interactions. Features include:

Device and Data Interoperability

• Device Manifests: Onboard any device using a universal language to describe device states and actions.
• Multi-Protocol Connectors: Connect any device to the cloud using multiple protocols – REST/HTTP, Websockets, MQTT and CoAP.
• Cloud Connectors: Connect to any cloud service and collect data from it.
• Heterogeneous Data Collection: Collect any data (continuous, discrete, real time or historical) from any device or third-party cloud.
• Two-Way Communication: Securely exchange messages between device and cloud, even on low-power devices such as wearables and end-node sensors.
• Data Normalization and Analytics: Gain access to data, statistics and aggregations with multiple backends to store, replicate and index data.

Security and Privacy

• Secure Device Registration: Securely connect devices to the cloud using TLS, secure element and certificates issued by a trusted certificate authority.
• Authentication and Authorization: Secure every device, app and user interaction with open Internet standards-based authentication and authorization.
• Privacy Management: Protect data privacy with built-in identity and permissions management.

Developer Tools

• Universal Data Access APIs: Collect and query data from disparate devices using open APIs.
• SDKs: Enable developers to build apps and services using a number of mobile and platform SDKs, such as: Objective C/iOS, Java/Android, JavaScript, Swift, PHP, Python, Ruby, Scala and C#, as well as Tizen 3.0 when released.
• Rules Engine: Trigger cross-device actions and alerts with a built-in rules engine.
• Visualization Tools: Visualize data from disparate devices in context.
• Developer Portal: Increase developer productivity with self-service access to rich API documentation, API console, blogs, samples, forums, etc.
• API-first: Manage and extend platform entities using built-in REST APIs.

Companies are reimagining how data from many connected devices can be used to build innovative apps and services. Legrand, an electrical installation company, is working with Samsung to connect the Legrand Cloud platform to the Artik Cloud to drive the IoT revolution in the building sector.

Ernesto Santini, Legrand VP Innovation and Systems, commented, “To be connected to the Artik Cloud is another step in our openness strategy, which aims to make Legrand's legacy devices and new smart devices interoperable with other connected products...”

Digibe Software is also embracing IoT. The company delivers products for the industrial Internet helping customers optimize assets and connect data from machines, databases and people in meaningful ways. “The APIs and developer tools in Artik Cloud helped us deliver, in less than two months, a solution to access siloed IoT asset data and trigger collaboration to address anomalies – directly from Salesforce.” said Pierre Lecointre, co-founder and CTO of Digibe.