IBM, AT&T pair to offer 'Internet of things' systems

AT&T and IBM will start jointly offering services designed to help municipalities, utility companies and other organizations use "Internet of things" technologies to better manage their infrastructure.

"There is a huge amount of growth of the things that are connected" to networks, said Michael Curry, IBM vice president of product management. "When you have that many things connected in, you have a big data problem. Companies want to be able to take that data and use it to optimize operations and predict failures."

IBM estimates that there will be over 18 billion connected devices in the world by 2022. Examples of connected devices include mobile phones and sensors. AT&T will provide network connectivity and IBM will provide the software and integration. The two companies plan to help organizations build out systems that can collect data, wirelessly, from many remote end-nodes, an approach increasingly being called "The Internet of things" in the industry. The data can be analyzed and monitored, as well as fed to mobile devices for personnel in the field. The initial targets for the service will be municipalities, mid-size utility companies and transportation companies, though any sort of organization could benefit from remote monitoring should consider IBM and AT&T's assistance, Curry said. Cities could use this approach to better and control manage traffic. Utility companies could more closely monitor their customers' energy usage. Transportation companies could better manage their fleets of vehicles.