IBM is a top tier player and driving force in the burgeoning Internet of Things market. In April it committed $3 billion to fund its new IoT Business unit and hire 2,000 workers. IBM’s worldwide brand, ongoing R&D activities, vast patent portfolio and high profile partnerships like the Apple Mobile First alliance, make it an IoT powerhouse in a wide variety of verticals including Banking, Government, Healthcare, Retail and Smarter Cities.

On March 31, 2015 IBM’s announced it would invest $3 billion to form a standalone IoT Business Unit and hire 2,000 workers to staff the newly formed unit over the next four years.

IBM is solidifying and expanding its stake as one of the preeminent IoT vendors with a full slate of products, standards-based platforms, solutions, services and strategic partnerships. 

While the IoT market will have no singular vendor market leader, IBM is clearly a formidable market competitor in this emerging space.

This Report examines IBM's IoT products, partnerships and business and monetary initiatives and compares and contrasts IBM's positioning in the IoT space with those of its major rivals like Cisco, Google, HP, SAP and SAS, among others. 

Contents

IBM IoT: Four Foundational Elements  8

3.1     IBM IoT Business Unit 10

3.2     IBM M2M Solutions: A subset of IoT Opportunities  12

3.3     IBM IoT Partnerships  13

3.4     IBM IoT Real World Use Cases  15

4.1     IBM Big Data and Predictive Analytics  18

4.2     IBM Analytics Investments, Initiatives  19

8.1     IBM IoT Strengths  27

8.2     IBM Weaknesses & Challenges  28

8.3     IBM Opportunities  29

8.4     IBM Threats  29

Exhibits

Table 1: IBM by the Numbers. 23

Figure 1: Shift to IoT Requires Vendors to Make Significant Investments. 5

Figure 2: IBM IoT Strategic Elements. 9

Figure 3: IBM’s IoT Ecosystem.. 17

Figure 4: Shift to IoT and Services Drives Need for Analytics. 19

Figure 5: IBM Number 1 in Patents for Two Decades. 25