Arm brings automation to IoT connectivity management

By Nigel Chadwick, vice president and general manager, Pelion Connectivity Management, Arm

August 01, 2019 -- As businesses undergo digital transformation, automation will be at the heart of increasing productivity, reducing costs and creating new opportunities. From an Internet of Things (IoT) perspective, we believe that today’s manual processes will fall short in meeting the demand of a world where billions, and ultimately trillions, of devices need to be connected and managed.

The consistent message we hear from mobile network operators (MNOs) is that automation is the key to removing the connectivity barriers required for IoT to scale. As a direct result of this MNO input, we are launching Pelion Connectivity Management 2.0, which includes a new advanced automation engine. Pelion Connectivity Management already offered MNOs the simplicity of a single platform for managing IoT connectivity across all their device’s lifecycles. With the release of Pelion Connectivity Management 2.0, MNOs can now drive additional revenue opportunities by enabling their enterprise clients with capabilities for automatically configuring their IoT devices.

These new automation capabilities significantly improve the IoT services, speed and reliability of connectivity that MNOs deliver to their enterprise customers – whether it’s the provisioning of new devices or ensuring monthly bills never go over a set threshold.

Automation capabilities now available with Pelion Connectivity Management 2.0 include:

• Real-time data triggers: Create rules that are triggered by what’s happening in the physical world
• Seamless remote Subscriber Identity Module (eSIM) provisioning management: As devices travel the globe, the automation engine ensures the correct service and commercial configuration
• Automating business processes: Reduce operational costs in IoT deployments and improve profit margins for MNOS providing IoT services

As I previously mentioned, these new automation features are a direct result of MNO input and were a catalyst for our new agreement with NOS, the largest communications and entertainment group in Portugal. NOS plans to leverage Pelion Connectivity Management 2.0 to help monetize their IoT connectivity and expand their service to customers outside of Portugal. They saw immediate value in the new automation engine and the ability to seamlessly integrate the service into their existing network and systems. NOS will migrate their entire IoT subscriber base to Pelion Connectivity Management 2.0 enabling them to run analytics on network performance and device provisioning, as well as automate processes and settings based on a certain amount of data usage or specific timeframe.

In addition to providing these new automation features to MNOs, we are also the first mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) to roll out an automation engine directly to global enterprises. Arm will significantly help enterprises overcome the challenges of moving from pilot IoT projects to a global scale. It simply hasn’t been feasible for enterprises to directly manage manually every device when your IoT deployment spans thousands of devices, multiple countries and different mobile networks. Pelion Connectivity Management eliminates these administrative barriers by providing automation at scale through a single pane of glass.

The new automation engine features come standard with Pelion Connectivity Management 2.0, which is now available globally for MNOs. Select enterprise customers will also have access to a beta version of these features.

Supplemental Quote Sheet:

“With our enterprise customers increasingly expanding internationally, as well as the rise of new technologies such as NB-IoT and eSIM, we wanted an IoT connectivity management service that can provide a single pane of glass regardless of underlying technology, MNO or geography,” said Carlos Lourenço, Director Corporate IoT Business Unit, NOS. “Arm Pelion Connectivity Management’s pre-integrated global MNO partners, seamless integration with our existing network and systems, and new automation engine play an essential role in allowing us to scale our IoT connectivity service for our customers.”

“Network operators and enterprise customers might start with small estates of devices but look to scale up quickly as the benefits of IoT are realised,” said Michele Mackenzie, Principal Analyst, Analysys Mason, “For millions (and potentially billions) of devices to be connected to telecoms networks in a timely, cost efficient, scalable way platform services will need to become increasingly automated.”

About Arm

Arm technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Our advanced, energy-efficient processor designs have enabled intelligent computing in more than 145 billion chips and our technologies now securely power products from the sensor to the smartphone and the supercomputer. In combination with our IoT device, connectivity and data management platform, we are also enabling customers with powerful and actionable business insights that are generating new value from their connected devices and data. Together with 1,000+ technology partners we are at the forefront of designing, securing and managing all areas of compute from the chip to the cloud.