Salesforce is the latest company to get in to the internet of things (IoT) game after announcing its new service, the IoT Cloud, at its Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.
Given its background as a cloud computing company, it might not come as a surprise that Salesforce has announced such a service and, from what it has announced so far, it has big plans to harness the data it receives.
Announcing the platform, Salesforce said that it will store and analyse the reams of data it receives through user data generated on consumer devices.
According to TechCrunch, IoT cloud will give Salesforce’s customers access to data and it will allow the companies to respond to their own customers, for example, one of the pilot companies on the platform, Emerson, will be able to contact someone if it sees there is a problem with one of its connected thermostats.
Ticking underneath the surface of IoT Cloud will be Thunder, its data processing software that takes aspects of Apache analytical tools used by Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Speaking at the opening of its Dreamforce conference, Salesforce’s senior director of product marketing, Dylan Steele, also said he sees wearable devices and mobiles playing a part in IoT Cloud.
Steele said: “We are watching the increasing volume of data coming off of connected devices, and we are thinking about how we can help customers deal with those massive amounts of data.”
The company is also aiming to break the lucrative industrial IoT market to harness factory and machinery data, which, Accenture said earlier this year, could be worth as much as US$14.3trn by 2030.
Salesforce said it will begin offering customers access to IoT Cloud sometime early next year.
IoT image via Shutterstock
