Nokia launches app-agnostic Impact IoT cloud platform

Intelligent Management Platform for All Connected Things aimed at operators, enterprises and governments

Nokia has launched an app-agnostic platform that will let developers, governments and organisations provide Internet of Things (IoT) services and launch them more quickly.

The Intelligent Management Platform for All Connected Things (Impact) is Nokia's stab at creating a way to handle data collection, event processing, device management, data contextualisation, analytics and end-to-end security.

Nokia claimed that the cloud-based Impact service provides a platform for operators, enterprises and governments to scale IoT services.

Impact supports some 80,000 device models from 100 of the world's top manufacturers, according to Nokia, and can detect new device formats launched to the market despite the widespread fragmentation in the IoT arena.

The platform can also support multiple deployment and business models such as those running in public or private clouds. Nokia claimed that this gives companies working on IoT services a lower cost of entry to the market and the ability to scale cloud resource use up or down.

Bhaskar Gorti, president of the Applications & Analytics Business Group at Nokia, explained that offering a platform that enshrines device management, analytics and security is very important in the development and adoption of the IoT worldwide.

"These things matter because as we collect and derive meaning from IoT data it becomes more valuable to everyone involved, and more crucial to protect," he said.

Nokia's desire to position itself as an IoT platform provider is ambitious, given the competition from the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, both of which provide the cloud foundations and offer IoT layers and tools on top.

However, Nokia has plenty of experience on the hardware side when it comes to electronic devices, so there is some scope to establish itself as a company that understands the connectivity between IoT devices and can provide software and security support layers.