Accelerating Digital Transformation with IoT Data, Thanks to Cisco and IBM

A year ago, IBM and Cisco announced a global collaboration to bring business insights to the edge of the network with IoT. Since then, we’ve been working to enable businesses in every industry to leverage the combined power of IBM Watson IoT in the cloud and Cisco’s Kinetic IoT data management platform to help organizations drive maximum business value from their IoT data, no matter where it resides.

Over the last year, we completed the integration of Cisco Kinetic and IBM Watson IoT to enable even greater capabilities at the network edge. IBM’s Global Services group and the Cisco IoT group have long been focused on helping customers redesign experiences to create new sources of value and drive greater efficiencies through digital transformation. By combining Cisco’s edge and fog capabilities with IBM’s cloud and analytics solutions, we are uniquely enabling IoT data services that help companies modernize their operations and drive growth.

The result is an end-to-end intelligent platform that enables businesses to extract, compute, and move data to deliver maximum business value – whether at the edge, on premise or in the cloud. Together we are delivering a first of its kind solution that allows customers to analyze business performance at the point of data collection so they can tightly monitor and control how their environment, assets and people are performing against their mission.

Enabling the “World’s Smartest Port”

You may have seen the news about how the Port of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port by cargo tonnage, is leveraging IoT and advanced analytics to transform the port’s operational environment and drive greater efficiencies. IBM and Cisco have been working together not only to enable the Port of Rotterdam’s goal of hosting autonomous ships by 2030, but also to enable the IoT data services that are driving greater efficiency and increased revenues for the clients of the port.

The Port of Rotterdam processes more than 140,000 ships every year, and coordinating the berthing of each vessel is a remarkably complex task that involves many parties and thousands of data points. For example, collecting data about weather and water conditions like wind, visibility, height of tide and tidal stream, enables the port to determine the optimal conditions and timing for a safe berth and passage of a ship. Additional value is added by helping them calculate clearance heights for ships. Increasing the capacity of ships based on clearance heights can dramatically increase the revenue generated by each ship entering the port.

That same data can even be used in the future to give ships advice on the most environmental friendly conditions to enter the port, saving fuel costs and lowering the CO2 footprint of the Port of Rotterdam.

The combination of Cisco Kinetic, Cisco’s industrial IoT routers/gateways, and IBM Watson IoT provide the Port of Rotterdam with everything they need for the end-to-end IoT data services that are enabling this transformation. This includes:

Secure authentication and management of Cisco gateways

Application of intelligence at point of data generation to enable decisions at the edge

Automated connectivity, deployment, and management of sensors

Streamlined extraction, processing, and delivery of data

Cloud analytics, data visualization, and insights

The ability to get the right data to the right applications at the right time is critical for organizations like the Port of Rotterdam to truly transform their operations and the way they run their businesses. With the integration of IBM Watson IoT and Cisco Kinetic, we are putting complete control of IoT data into our customers hands and empowering them to drive better business outcomes than ever before possible. And we’re not done yet. With the success of the Port of Rotterdam, IBM and Cisco are working together to solve the IoT problems of customers around the world and help them turn their IoT data into business gold. If you want to learn more, send us an email at CiscoKinetic@Cisco.com or visit www.ciscokinetic.com.