Vodacom to acquire IoT.nxt

Vodacom will acquire a 51% stake in South African Internet of things specialist IoT.nxt, the telecommunications group said on Monday.

The value of the deal has not been disclosed by Vodacom and is subject to approval by the Competition Commission.

“IoT.nxt creates data connectivity between new data sources and legacy systems, which allows for real-time data availability across a wide business segment,” Vodacom said.

The company has created a platform to allow companies to integrate their IT platforms with IoT devices seamlessly.

The company’s “technology agnostic” offering acts as a conduit between sensors and other IoT devices at the edge of the network, and the application layer in companies’ IT departments.

But integrating IoT sensors and other devices into corporate IT systems is difficult, not least because of the volume of data involved and the complexity in integrating disparate hardware and software systems. A lack of standardisation makes the challenge harder still.

“One of the biggest challenges in IoT, if you deploy thousands of sensors and are monitoring them every 200 milliseconds, is you have a huge amount of traffic that hits your network,” IoT.nxt CEO Nico Steyn said in an interview with TechCentral in 2016. “We have engineered and built a field gateway that manages the data flow effectively.”

The company has expanded internationally in recent years, and last September announced it was establishing a presence in the US, where it would work with partners on various projects. It opened an office in the Netherlands in 2017 on the back of R100-million in funding from investment holding company Talent10.  — (c) 2019 NewsCentral Media