WDLabs®, a business growth incubator of  storage solutions leader Western Digital® Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC), is  utilizing its WD® My Cloud® OS3 device in conjunction with the IBM® Internet of  Things (IoT) Foundation and the ARM® mbed™ IoT Device Platform to provide  developers a flexible platform to support advanced analytics and data  application services.

At the ARM TechCon conference  (booth #910) in Santa Clara, CA, WDLabs will be demonstrating a proof-of-concept  on how the WD My Cloud OS 3 SDK provides an ideal platform for developing  applications at the edge. In addition, IoT sensor data may be stored and  analyzed when integrated with the ARM mbed IoT Device Platform and IBM IoT  Foundation. Ultimately, knowledge gained from analysis of multiple data sources  can be combined to achieve further insight.

Together the companies create a viable  infrastructure for developers to create better and smarter apps that process  IoT and video data at the edge. Western Digital, IBM and ARM play three  significant roles to enable the development in an end-to-end IoT infrastructure  for app and device developers, such as: 

• Smart Sensors: The mbed IoT Device Platform is secure, enables devices to be  mass-production ready and offers support for app developers to plug and play  sensors; 
• Data  Services at the Edge: WD’s My Cloud OS 3 platform interacts with the mbed IoT  Device Platform, hosting data services at the Edge and connecting to data  services on the cloud; and 
• Analyzing  the Data: IBM real-time, predictive and cognitive analytic services run locally  through IBM IoT Foundation platform to better understand the data that IoT  devices generate, including video analytics libraries optimized for sending  alerts, metadata and deeper analytics.

"Western Digital is enabling inventors and  businesses to be more productive, while storing data locally on My Cloud systems,"  said Richard E. Rutledge, SVP of marketing, WDLabs. "The My Cloud OS SDK and platform enable app developers to efficiently connect to their apps and run  local analytics and metadata."

The  demonstration will address the following pain points for app developers in  IoT: 

• Performance: Maintaining  data locally provides faster access to more actionable data. By using local analytics, only necessary and  relevant video data and metadata need to be sent to the cloud. Local analytics  can be run on My Cloud OS 3, with complex analytics in IBM IoT Foundation for  greater functionality. Latency problems are reduced because users are not  sending all of the data set to the datacenter and back. Local data retention  also means a user can run edge-based trend analysis on historical data. 
• Control:  Storing data locally allows a user to control what’s shared. Only pre-processed  fractions of the data must be transferred to the cloud for more comprehensive  analytics. 
• Cost: Data storage latency  and resource costs are reduced by storing most of the data locally on a My  Cloud device. Subscription fees are eliminated and bandwidth requirements are  lower. 
• Security:  Pre-processed data is encrypted when transferred to the cloud.

The impact of IoT lies in the sheer  volume of data generated. More and more of the world’s activity is being  expressed digitally by billions of interconnected devices. The resulting data provides  businesses with the ability to learn more about their operating environment and  to act with the potential of creating new value. IoT is helping businesses  better understand and manage very complex systems, such as smart surveillance  buildings. According to IDC, 61 percent of the organizations surveyed by the  firm are actively pursuing IoT initiatives.

It is estimated from IDC that by 2020, IoT  spending will rise to $3 trillion and there will be nearly 30 billion IoT devices. As IoT sensors generate  more and more data at the edge, in systems such as automation and video  surveillance for smart homes/buildings, there is not a simple or clear way to  save, aggregate and learn from all the data that is being generated. 

"As the IoT grows, there is  an increased demand for reliable, secure and productive embedded software and  web services," said Zach Shelby, vice president of marketing, IoT business,  ARM. "ARM mbed is providing the building blocks to simplify the creation and  deployment of secure and reliable IoT applications at scale. The collaboration  with Western Digital and IBM offers mbed developers the key value-add features  to enable a full end-to-end IoT infrastructure solution."

"We are excited about collaborating with both Western Digital  and ARM on a real-world example of secure distributed analytics for the  Internet of Things," said John Cohn, IBM Fellow, Internet of Things. "The proof  of concept shows how easy it is to link ARM's mbed devices to IBM real-time  analytics by way of Western Digital's highly secure storage My Cloud gateway.  Together we are showing how we can efficiently move workloads through a highly  secure gateway and obtain real-time insights through a combination of advanced  analytics on the edge and in the cloud."

My Cloud SDK Platform:

The  My Cloud device SDK, based on the Docker™ open platform technology, ensures developers  can easily access and collaborate to create customized experiences. Partners  already developing extensions and new features based on the new SDK include Plex and Milestone. To learn more about the My Cloud  platform for developers, visit http://developer.mycloud.com/.