Digi International, a leading connectivity provider in the world of Machine to Machine communication, made two big announcements today at Mobile World Congress. First, the company announced that its device-to-cloud connectivity technology will now ship baked-into two products from Freescale. The companies call the Digi/Freescale collaboration “the industry’s first cloud-connected microcontrollers with out-of-box cloud connectivity.”
Digi also announced a new software development kit called the iDigi Connector, which the company claims will enable “any device, regardless of manufacturer or operating system, to seamlessly connect to the iDigi Device Cloud. This means any device, anywhere, can now connect to any Internet application.” The company did not explain how it could integrate with any OS imaginable, but perhaps it’s just using a very simple API that’s universally understood.
Digi already offered a wide range of connectivity options, from the little ZigBee to access to the Iridium satellite network for global connectivity. The company aims to get all kinds of devices connected to the cloud, then sell remote device and software management and data storage services.
Digi says that adding connectivity to devices is a powerful competitive differentiator. That is undoubtedly true, when comparing connected versus un-connected devices, but it’s also one of the primary talking points of iDigi competitor Axeda. Axeda attempts to differentiate their services here. To compare the two companies by size, according to LinkedIn Axeda has under 200 employees and Digi International has over 500. Freescale, who will now be distributing iDigi connectivity in two of its products, has well over 10,000 employees.
