A new open data exchange platform from Samsung is bringing some competition to the Internet of Things market. The new service, known as the Artik Cloud Platform, will directly compete with other commercial cloud services such as Microsoft’s Azure and IBM’s Bluemix to help bring interoperability to more devices and services.
Samsung launched the platform yesterday at the 2016 Samsung Developer Conference taking place in San Francisco. The company is touting Artik as an easy-to-use alternative that will make it faster and easier for developers to bring new IoT solutions and services to market. The service is available now through a pay-as-you-go tiered pricing plan.
Breaking Down Data Silos
“Unlike many other IoT cloud platforms, Artik Cloud breaks down data [silos] between devices and enables a new class of IoT applications and services,” Young Sohn, president and chief strategy officer of Samsung Electronics, said in a statement.
“The launch of this exciting new platform not only signals Samsung’s foray into the cloud services market but reinforces our belief that, by creating powerful open platforms, we can harness the information generated by IoT to develop new insights and new approaches to address the major global challenges of today and tomorrow,” he added.
In particular, Samsung is promoting the service’s open APIs and tools as ways for developers to overcome the problem of interoperability between different cloud providers. Artik can take data from enterprise systems, third-party clouds, and different devices and use that data to build vertical, onboarding, predictive and partner apps.
The company said that the platform is highly scalable, with an architecture designed to support the billions of IoT devices expected in the next few years, and keeps latency low to enable fast interactions.
Supporting IoT and Cloud Adoption
The new service is critical to the company’s enterprise clients as well as to ensure that its own products are interconnected, said B.K. Yoon, CEO of Samsung Electronics. “As more and more consumer IoT devices are created and brought to market, the need for interoperability becomes paramount as it is the key to creating more compelling and integrated experiences,” he said in the statement.
Yoon said the need for an open cloud solution that can work with any connected device, and with other cloud services is critical to supporting greater consumer and enterprise adoption of the cloud. “The launch of Artik Cloud is extremely exciting because it promises to not only help Samsung connect our diverse portfolio of products, but also enable other companies to participate in a growing IoT ecosystem,” he said.
Among the developer tools included in the platform are universal data access APIs that can collect and query data from disparate devices through Artik’s open APIs. Developers can also use a number of SDKs with the platform, including Objective C, iOS, Java, Android, JavaScript, Swift, PHP, Python, Ruby, Scala, and C#. Meanwhile, Artik modules incorporate a hardware secure element to protect the OS and applications, and an available Trusted Execution Environment protects code and data integrity.
Image Credit: Logo and infographic icons via Samsung Artik website.
