WDLabs® Enables Internet Of Things For App And Device Developers

Companies Push the Edge and Transform Data Into Value

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Nov 10, 2015, 08:00 ET

Western Digital Corp. logo.

IRVINE, Calif., Nov. 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- WDLabs^®, a business growth incubator of storage solutions leader Western Digital® Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC), is utilizing its WD® My Cloud® OS3 device in conjunction with the IBM® Internet of Things (IoT) Foundation and the ARM® mbed™ IoT Device Platform to provide developers a flexible platform to support advanced analytics and data application services.

At the ARM TechCon conference (booth #910) in Santa Clara, CA, WDLabs will be demonstrating a proof-of-concept on how the WD My Cloud OS 3 SDK provides an ideal platform for developing applications at the edge. In addition, IoT sensor data may be stored and analyzed when integrated with the ARM mbed IoT Device Platform and IBM IoT Foundation. Ultimately, knowledge gained from analysis of multiple data sources can be combined to achieve further insight.

Together the companies create a viable infrastructure for developers to create better and smarter apps that process IoT and video data at the edge. Western Digital, IBM and ARM play three significant roles to enable the development in an end-to-end IoT infrastructure for app and device developers, such as:

Smart Sensors: The mbed IoT Device Platform is secure, enables devices to be mass-production ready and offers support for app developers to plug and play sensors;
Data Services at the Edge: WD's My Cloud OS 3 platform interacts with the mbed IoT Device Platform, hosting data services at the Edge and connecting to data services on the cloud; and
Analyzing the Data: IBM real-time, predictive and cognitive analytic services run locally through IBM IoT Foundation platform to better understand the data that IoT devices generate, including video analytics libraries optimized for sending alerts, metadata and deeper analytics.

"Western Digital is enabling inventors and businesses to be more productive, while storing data locally on My Cloud systems," said Richard E. Rutledge, SVP of marketing, WDLabs. "The My Cloud OS SDK and platform enable app developers to efficiently connect to their apps and run local analytics and metadata."

The demonstration will address the following pain points for app developers in IoT:

Performance: Maintaining data locally provides faster access to more actionable data. By using local analytics, only necessary and relevant video data and metadata need to be sent to the cloud. Local analytics can be run on My Cloud OS 3, with complex analytics in IBM IoT Foundation for greater functionality. Latency problems are reduced because users are not sending all of the data set to the datacenter and back. Local data retention also means a user can run edge-based trend analysis on historical data.
Control: Storing data locally allows a user to control what's shared. Only pre-processed fractions of the data must be transferred to the cloud for more comprehensive analytics.
Cost: Data storage latency and resource costs are reduced by storing most of the data locally on a My Cloud device. Subscription fees are eliminated and bandwidth requirements are lower.
Security: Pre-processed data is encrypted when transferred to the cloud.

The impact of IoT lies in the sheer volume of data generated. More and more of the world's activity is being expressed digitally by billions of interconnected devices. The resulting data provides businesses with the ability to learn more about their operating environment and to act with the potential of creating new value. IoT is helping businesses better understand and manage very complex systems, such as smart surveillance buildings. According to IDC, 61 percent of the organizations surveyed by the firm are actively pursuing IoT initiatives¹.

It is estimated from IDC that by 2020, IoT spending will rise to $3 trillion and there will be nearly 30 billion IoT devices². As IoT sensors generate more and more data at the edge, in systems such as automation and video surveillance for smart homes/buildings, there is not a simple or clear way to save, aggregate and learn from all the data that is being generated.

"As the IoT grows, there is an increased demand for reliable, secure and productive embedded software and web services," said Zach Shelby, vice president of marketing, IoT business, ARM. "ARM mbed is providing the building blocks to simplify the creation and deployment of secure and reliable IoT applications at scale. The collaboration with Western Digital and IBM offers mbed developers the key value-add features to enable a full end-to-end IoT infrastructure solution."

"We are excited about collaborating with both Western Digital and ARM on a real-world example of secure distributed analytics for the Internet of Things," said John Cohn, IBM Fellow, Internet of Things. "The proof of concept shows how easy it is to link ARM's mbed devices to IBM real-time analytics by way of Western Digital's highly secure storage My Cloud gateway. Together we are showing how we can efficiently move workloads through a highly secure gateway and obtain real-time insights through a combination of advanced analytics on the edge and in the cloud."

My Cloud SDK Platform:

The My Cloud device SDK, based on the Docker™ open platform technology, ensures developers can easily access and collaborate to create customized experiences. Partners already developing extensions and new features based on the new SDK include Plex and Milestone. To learn more about the My Cloud platform for developers, visit http://developer.mycloud.com/.

About WD Labs®

WD Labs, a Western Digital organization, is a business growth incubator focused on opportunity identification, early engagement, partnering and market creation. It accomplishes this goal via a disciplined growth process and staffing with a broad range of WD talent and aims to create ecosystem opportunities for both WD and its partners.

About Western Digital

Founded in 1970, Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC), Irvine, Calif., is an industry-leading developer and manufacturer of storage solutions that enable people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content. It is a long-time innovator in the storage industry. Western Digital Corporation is responding to changing market needs by providing a full portfolio of compelling, high-quality storage products with effective technology deployment, high efficiency, flexibility and speed. Its products are marketed under the HGST and WD brands to OEMs, distributors, resellers, cloud infrastructure providers and consumers. Financial and investor information is available on the company's Investor Relations website at investor.wdc.com.

Apps, services, and other features are subject to change based on your location, software version, device model, and third party service providers.

Western Digital, and the WD logo are registered trademarks and WDLabs is a trademark of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products may be available in all regions of the world. As used for storage capacity, one gigabyte = one billion bytes; one terabyte = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.

¹ IoT Quick Look: Buyer Behavior by Industry and Company Size, IDC, August 2014, http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=250209

² IDC MaturityScape Benchmark: Enterprise Mobility in the United States", IDC, May 2015

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SOURCE Western Digital Corp.