Particle launches its enterprise IoT Platform, Particle Cloud

Particle, an Internet of Things (IoT) platform, announced the launch of Particle Cloud, its enterprise IoT PaaS cloud platform. According to the company, the platform is already being used by Fortune 500 companies to ship secure, reliable, and easy-to-use IoT products in as little as six months. The IoT player explains that typically, building an IoT product takes 18 to 36 months and costs millions of dollars. However Particle allows engineers and developers to build their first prototype in less time with a relatively cheaper hardware development kit priced at $19. Hence the company claims that this model allows product creators and OEMs to iterate quickly and ship a higher-quality product faster. Zach Supalla, Co-founder and CEO, Particle, said:

The Internet of Things is a new industry with huge potential. However, the unfortunate reality is that many businesses’ IoT initiatives flounder or fail. The strongest business case for building an IoT product is irrelevant if you can’t execute. Companies who work with Particle actually ship their products.

How can enterprises use Particle Cloud?

The IoT platform is designed to connect physical devices to the web and expose their functionality through a secure API, as well as a suite of software development tools and a Device Management Console for managing a “fleet” of connected devices. Furthermore, enterprise customers can also upgrade to get private cloud deployments, enterprise uptime SLAs, enterprise support contracts, pre-built integrations with popular data management and analytics platforms, access controls and audit logs to track activity in the system, and storage of events and data published by devices. Particle’s development kits have been used by Spark Core, the Photon and Electron for creating IoT prototypes. Companies like Keurig, Briggs Healthcare, and Engie (GDF Suez) have also developed new products that run on Particle Cloud. In addition, the company claims that around 20 Particle-powered products from startups like Grove and CleverPet have been crowdfunded on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, raising millions of dollars to deliver their products.

“We made more progress on our first day with Particle than we had in months without them, and within six months we began collecting data from thousands of connected brewers in the hands of consumers,” said Michael Cunningham, CIO, Keurig.

In order to deliver a complete solution to customers, Particle has partnered with Google, Microsoft, IFTTT, and a number of other data and analytics cloud platforms who help customers generate insights from the massive quantities of data produced by IoT products. Particle has also partnered with semiconductor companies like Broadcom, Cypress, u-blox, and ST to deliver its hardware solutions, and cellular connectivity providers like Twilio, T-Mobile, and Telefonica to provide networking.