Cisco and IBM’s newly announced global collaboration to provide instant Internet of Things (IoT) Analytics insight at the network edge is a game changer. The deal is far more than just another ballyhooed partnership among high tech titans. The IBM/Cisco alliance augurs in a new era of “co-opetition” among vendors to provide analytics capabilities at the network perimeter, which can provide organizations with immediate tangible business advantages, technical and cost benefits, in order to accelerate mainstream IoT adoption.

Specifically, the two companies have teamed up to enable IBM’s Watson analytics technology platform to run on Cisco’s gateway devices at the edge of the network, in what they described as a “Hybrid IoT architecture.” The combination of IBM’s Watson running on Cisco’s networking gear, to analyze the massive amounts of data collected by devices, sensors and machines at the network edge or perimeter, obviates the need for corporate enterprises to have an Internet connection in certain use case scenarios, such as remote locations where the option to store data in the cloud or Internet access is unavailable, unreliable or prohibitively expensive.  This is a boon for remote customers. It saves time, lowers transmission costs and cuts down on network traffic – and most importantly it ensures they have access to real-time analytics capabilities