Toshiba & Microsoft to collaborate on IoT development
Toshiba Corporation and Microsoft Corporation have announced that the two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to jointly develop solutions for the IoT. Leveraging Toshiba’s innovative IoT devices with Microsoft’s Azure IoT Cloud infrastructure, Toshiba will deliver state of the art sensor-data-driven applications in various market segments starting in calendar year 2015.
In this partnership, Toshiba will provide XaaS (X as a Service) making use of its extensive in-house technologies such as ApP Lite (Application Processor Lite), in-vehicle driving recorders, sensors and cloud storage services and Microsoft will provide IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), private line services (Azure ExpressRoute) and advanced analytics (Azure Machine Learning) as part of Microsoft Azure (collectively, “Azure”).
Together Toshiba and Microsoft will offer innovative IoT enterprise solutions, starting with the transportation and logistics market in calendar year 2015, by delivering state-of-the-art IoT devices and XaaS, utilising scalable, cost-effective services and technologies combined with a great user experience.
Toshiba Group continually strives to achieve the “Human Smart Community,” the company’s vision of a safe, secure and comfortable society, drawing on its world-class expertise in Energy, Healthcare, Storage products and services.
Microsoft continues to deliver on its mobile-first, cloud first vision by delivering solutions and experiences together with the partner ecosystem, and offering a flexible cloud-based approach that enables enterprises to capitalise on IoT by gathering, storing and processing data centrally.
“IoT is bringing in a dramatic technology transition that is reshaping the nature of networks, the meaning of service, and the way we live and work,” said Shigeyoshi Shimotsuji, Corporate Vice President and Executive Vice President, Industrial ICT Solutions Company, Toshiba Corporation. “This partnership presents a unique opportunity for Microsoft and Toshiba to bring together the best of our technologies and offer a compelling value proposition to our enterprise customers and further build a more information-friendly and comfortable community.”
“Bringing together the power of the Azure Services and IoT Suite with Toshiba’s cutting edge sensor driven devices will provide a new level of data access and business intelligence to customers,” said Nick Parker, Corporate Vice President OEM Division, Microsoft. “To stay competitive, businesses today need instant access to changing data so they can act quickly and seize opportunities.”