Eurotech and IBM contribute software to connect next gen of wireless and mobile devices

LUDWIGSBURG, GERMANY: IBM and Eurotech announced that they are contributing software to accelerate and support the development of a new generation of smarter wireless and mobile devices. The technology, which could become the basis for a new standard of mobile connectivity and interoperability, will be contributed to the Eclipse Foundation open source community.

The Eclipse Foundation, founded by IBM in 2001, is celebrating its 10th anniversary at EclipseCon in Germany.

Originally developed by IBM and Eurotech, the contributed Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol is in use today among some industrial, mobile, and consumer applications, providing reliable device connectivity in industries such as transportation, energy, military, financial, social media and medical. Uses of MQTT range across projects as diverse as real-time monitoring for a ConocoPhillips pipeline, to a new lightweight mobile messaging application for Facebook.

Billions of embedded devices – from RFID tag readers, smartphones and cardiac monitors to GPS-aware systems, thermostats and smart appliances – can be interconnected to one another. Fueled by rapid growth in wireless broadband connectivity, this number is rapidly expanding. There are more than nine billion connected devices in the world today and according to a recent study conducted by Ericsson AB, that number is expected to reach 50 billion by 2020.

Many of these devices tend to be industry focused and tied to proprietary technologies and platforms, making true connectivity a complex task. Further, there is an influx of instrumented products, such as power meters and washing machines some of which do not yet have access to the power of the internet.

By connecting all of these devices with an open-source, cross-industry messaging technology, there is potential to create new systems of systems that can operate with one another like never before. This would help organizations more easily embrace growth opportunities across a wide range of industries, including retail, healthcare and automotive where the use of mobile and wireless devices are transforming the way they work.

For instance, today's smarter cities allow existing systems to alert operators of a broken water main and report the extent of flooding in streets and subways. However they are often closed systems. An open messaging protocol can be used to openly publish these events, enabling public and private transit systems to share and monitor these critical alerts. As a result, agencies would be able to adjust traffic signals, change routes, and notify commuters of alternative routes, transportation, lodging and meals on their mobile devices.

The architecture that the contributed technology enables can adapt easily to existing systems and provide a new level of connectivity across a wide range of systems – without requiring significant programming or reconfiguration of legacy monitoring systems.

"Just as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) enabled open communication over the internet, we believe the creation of an open protocol for messaging can do the same for smarter systems," explains Mike Milinkovich, executive director, Eclipse Foundation. "History has proven that driving open standards, such as IBM and Eurotech's contribution to Eclipse, is a proven strategy for rapid and widespread industry adoption."

Based on an industry proven open protocol, the MQTT technology will provide the missing piece needed to usher in this new level of accessibility and connectivity among systems, and enable the creation of next generation Machine-to-Machine (M2M) solutions.