Cisco’s Jasper Internet of things unit landed partnerships with automaker Honda, Korea Telecom and wearable health tracking company Jupl and completed live trials of a Narrow-Band IoT implementation with Australian telecom Optus.
The news landed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where Cisco’s Jasper unit outlined its progress since being acquired by the networking giant a year ago. Since the acquisition, Jasper’s IoT management platform has extended its reach into more enterprises and service providers.
Macario Namie, head of strategy at Cisco Jasper, said the company’s goal is to automate as much as the behind-the-scenes networking technology as possible in IoT implementations. “Connectivity isn’t the most strategic area of investment,” he said.
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Here’s a roundup of the partnerships with Jasper.
Honda is using Jasper and Bright Box to deliver its MyHonda Connected Car platform, which uses sensors to improve maintenance and the driver experience. Honda will launch Connected Car services in all European countries. The IoT connected services will include vehicle information and diagnostics, maintenance scheduling and location-based notifications. Bright Box uses Cisco’s Jasper to ensure connectivity, network coverage and telematics.
“For the top 20 auto OEMs we have the vast majority of them,” said Namie. “Brands are not connecting every vehicle yet so there’s growth there.”
Jupl is using Jasper to deliver its Personal Emergency Response System (mPERS) to senior citizens. Jupl is delivering its service to Samsung’s Gear S3 smartwatch, which has a SIM card and doesn’t need a smartphone. Jupl’s connected health software is managed via Jasper’s Control Center IoT platform. Jupl notifies emergency services, monitors biometrics and health data and provides location tracking and assistance. The mPERS smartwatch has soft launched with Bupa, a healthcare provider with 32 million customers globally.
KT customers will use Jasper to manage IoT devices globally. KT offers customers IoT tools and services such as connected car services based on its infrastructure. Also: With Jasper, Cisco covers IoT, cloud, software bases
With Optus, Cisco used its Jasper platform for Narrow Band IoT, which is a standard for Low Power Wide Area Networking (LPWAN). The standard is designed to provide connectivity to low-cost devices. NB-IoT uses LTE as well as GSMA. Smart meters, smart cities, parking, automation and asset tracking are likely to benefit the most from NB IoT.
Namie noted that there aren’t any commercial NB-IoT rollouts yet, but more launches are expected in the second half of 2017 and into 2018.
