German enterprise software giant SAP has earmarked $2.2 billion for the expansion of its Internet of Things portfolio. As part of that overall effort, SAP also says it is acquiring Italian IoT firm Plat.One and Norwegian analytics software maker Fedem Technology.
For starters, SAP’s $2.2 billion is part of a major push into the emerging IoT space and will support SAP’s creation of IoT development labs around the world and the launch of a new product line, dubbed SAP IoT.
The company is also rolling out a series of “jump-start” and “accelerator” IoT software packages for a variety of industries. The packages aim to help businesses monitor and control IoT software and equipment.
“With billions of connected devices, we now have the potential to reshape society, the economy and the environment,” said SAP chief executive Bill McDermott. “SAP HANA is the data platform we knew would unlock the Internet of Things. Today SAP is making another bold investment to help our customers seize the benefits of live business.”
As for the acquisitions, Plat.One makes a platform that’s used for creating, deploying, and managing IoT applications. SAP plans to use Plat.One to integrate key IoT capabilities into the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, such as device lifecycle management and connectivity, and IoT edge capabilities. Plat.One is headquartered in Palo Alto but was founded in Northern Italy, where its research team is still based.
With Fedem, SAP is looking to beef up on the analytics side of IoT. The deal was originally announced in June, but SAP is now providing more insight into its plans for the company. SAP says it will use Fedem to build a service in which IoT sensors and feeds are used to create digital avatars of buildings and industrial machines. These avatars will provide a visual representation of the state of IoT assets and essentially replace the need for physical, on-site inspection.
The announcements come just a day after SAP confirmed it acquired big data startup Altiscale. The Palo Alto-based company specializes in cloud-based Hadoop and Spark services that SAP plans to integrate across its entire portfolio.
