iDigi brings the cloud to machine-to-machine management

One of the results of the proliferation of wireless sensor networks is that all of these nodes, tirelessly collecting and transmitting data, implies a lot of data manipulation, which in turn implies a computing cloud-that is, the use of large numbers of computers, often over distributed data centers, to seamlessly process and store large amounts of data. Companies already deep into cloud computing are jumping into the Internet of Things as a significant new business opportunity for their expertise. Two examples: IBM, with its Smarter Planet program, and Hewlett-Packard, with its CENSE (Central Nervous System for the Earth).

Many small and medium-size companies are getting into wireless sensor networks and have no desire to develop the software support system for cloud computing - that’s not where their expertise lies. However, the computing and data storage part of sensor networks can provide a recurring service business model. For example, if your company makes a wireless sensor network that monitors vibration signatures from industrial equipment to predict field failures, taking it one step further to include repair and service of the equipment by monitoring and analyzing the sensor data now gives your company a service product.

Digi has announced its own version of cloud computing for machine-to-machine network management. As long as a sensor or a machine has an internet connection, it can be managed via iDigi, It enables secure remote access, control and management of network-connected devices and complete cloud-based application development. The basic price for the pricing for iDigi starts at $1.99 per device per month, but scales much lower with large volumes.