Internet of Things: IBM Chooses IoT Chief, GE Creates IoT Unit, Big Data for Cars, Smart Cities

After creating a $3 billion Internet of Things business unit earlier this year, IBM on Monday announced Harriet Green, formerly CEO and executive director of the Thomas Cook Group and of Premier Farnell, has joined the company as vice president and general manager for the new IoT and Education units.

The tech giant has also announced a new IBM Internet of Things service for automakers that gathers big data from individual sensors and other sources to provide real-time analysis. IBM says the cloud-based service will help turn driver and vehicle data into actionable insights for predictive vehicle maintenance, real-time diagnostics on engine trouble, and to guide drivers to the most efficient traffic routes.

Also this week General Electric created GE Digital, which the company says brings together all of the digital capabilities from across the company into one organization. GE Digital will integrate GE’s Software Center, the expertise of GE’s global IT and commercial software teams, and the industrial security strength of Wurldtech. This new model will be led by Bill Ruh, chief digital officer.

These announcements come as a smart cities initiative has been launched by the White House and major firms including Bank of America, General Electric, Duke Energy, Autodesk, Microsoft and Cisco Systems — part of Smart Cities week in Washington, DC. The smart cities initiative will invest more than $160 million in federal research and create test beds for internet of things applications.

As part of Smart Cities Week, Siemens has launched its City Performance Tool, a data-driven modeling tool that helps cities calculate the environmental and economic impacts of building, transport and energy technologies.

And Powerhouse Dynamics, creator of the SiteSage energy and asset management system, released the first version of its Smart Kitchen application that wirelessly connects ovens from several manufacturers to the cloud-based SiteSage platform. This combination allows commercial kitchens to continuously monitor cooking temperatures to ensure product quality, and enables real time alerting to possible problems, the company says. The system also automatically produces “HACCP” food safety reports, eliminating what was previously a very time consuming and error-prone manual process, and offers a permanent, archived record of cooking temperatures and times.