Boston.com: Boston’s LogMeIn launches cloud platform for “The Internet of Things”

boston_com-logo-resized-600.bmp Summary: Boston.com’s Daniel B. Kline announces LogMeIn’s launch of their cloud platform, Xively.

“Xively, formerly known as Cosm in its beta form, is designed to help companies simplify the development of connected products that can be quickly deployed, easily interact with other connected offerings, and scale to billions of devices.”

“Whether you’re an entrepreneur trying to build the next Nest-like device, an established manufacturer looking to differentiate through connected experiences, or a service provider looking to bring new connected services to market, Xively can significantly reduce costs and accelerate time-to-market for companies of all sizes.”

Read full article here: http://www.boston.com/businessupdates/2013/05/14/bdc-logmein/aofatIMhj4y9039OxLGxaO/story.html

Microwave Engineering Europe: ARM teams with LogMeIn to drive M2M in the cloud

EET_EU_LOGOSummary: Microwave Engineering Europe’s Nick Flaherty discusses Xively’s partnership with ARM to drive M2M usage in the IoT space.

“As part of the agreement, the companies are cooperating on LogMeIn’s Xively Jumpstart Kit, a rapid prototyping-to-production bundle that significantly reduces the cost, complexity and learning curve required to bring IoT-based connected products and solutions to market.”

“LogMeIn’s Xively Jumpstart Kit combines ARM’s mbed platform for rapidly building connected devices using ARM-based microcontrollers with Xively’s cloud platform for anyone wanting to build Internet-connected devices and associated cloud-based applications from small entrepreneurs to established Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).”

Read the full article here: http://www.microwave-eetimes.com/en/arm-teams-with-logmein-to-drive-m2m-in-the-cloud.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222903948&vID=35

 

Cambume.co.uk: LogMeIn and ARM offer IoT innovation starter kits

CabumeLogoSQCabume’s Lautaro Vargas discusses Xively and ARM’s Jumpstart Kit for IoT Innovators and entrepreneurs.

“Having already jammed its foot in the door of M2M communication through the ‘white space’ championing Weightless movement, ARM has now taken a major step into the consumer-centric Internet of Things (IoT) by partnering with LogMeIn to provide a basic product building kit for IoT innovators and entrepreneurs.”

“The market is predicted to generate anything between $1.2 trillion and $14.4 trillion in revenue and represent over one trillion connected objects by 2020.”

Read the full article here: http://www.cabume.co.uk/hardware/logmein-and-arm-offer-iot-innovation-starter-kits.html

M2M Now: LogMeIn and ARM work together to accelerate commercial products in the Internet of Things

m2mnowSummary: M2M Now’s Jeremy Cowan discusses how LogMeIn and ARM have partnered together to accelerate their place in the market of Internet of Things.

“As part of the ARM agreement, the companies are co-operating on LogMeIn’s Xively Jumpstart Kit, a rapid prototyping-to-production bundle that significantly reduces the cost, complexity and learning curve required to bring IoT-based connected products and solutions to market.”

“LogMeIn (NASDAQ:LOGM) aims to transform the way people work and live through secure connections to the computers, devices, data, and people that make up their digital world. ”

Read the full article here: http://www.m2mnow.biz/2013/05/15/11891-logmein-and-arm-work-together-to-accelerate-commercial-products-in-the-iot/

Information Age: We’re the Amazon Web Services of the Internet of Things, says Xively

Information AgeSummary: Information Age’s Pete Swabey describes Xively’s approach in the commercial market.

“It was peculiar acquisition for LogMeIn, which did not seems like an obvious candidate to capitalise on the “Internet of things”. Haque said at the time that LogMeIn had a proven track record of selling complicated technology to consumers.”

“The main attraction for businesses, Jones argues, is that they can get the data back-end for the connected devices up and running within hours. ‘We are going to do what Amazon Web Services has done, but for the Internet of things,’ he says.”

Read the full article here: http://www.information-age.com/technology/mobile-and-networking/123457051/we-re-the-amazon-web-services-of-the-internet-of-things–says-xively

The Register: LogMeIn dives into cloudy things with ARM support

RegisterSummary: The Register’s Bill Ray covers the launch of Xively and its pricing approach.

“Xively will charge a sliding scale kicking off at thousand dollars a year, but not until commercial deployment. Developer and hobbist accounts are free to use, and the deal with ARM creates a Jumpstart kit complete with an mbed Application board and LPC1768 Header board with which to start logging data.”

“The IoT is coming, and while one might debate if there’ll be 50 billion things or 5 billion things, they will still need an equivalent number of database records – so companies are vying to host that data.”

Read the full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/15/logmein_xively/

Xconomy: An Amazon Web Services for the Internet of Things?

XconomySummary: Xconomy’s Curt Woodward describes the progression of Pachube to now fully launched Xively and the future it holds in the space of the Internet of things.

“It’s a very interesting turn for LogMeIn, which has traditionally served a mostly small and medium-sized business customer base with its online software services. As that industry gets more crowded, it’s a bold move for the company to build an entirely new lane for itself.”

“And with it, LogMeIn hopes to build out its software business far beyond its current competition with companies like Box, Citrix, and Google for the inboxes and desktops of office workers around the world.”

Read full article here: http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2013/05/14/logmeins-xively-an-amazon-web-services-for-the-internet-of-things/

Wall Street Journal: Opening Up the ‘Internet of Things’

WSJ LogoSummary: Wall Street Journal’s Anna Leach reviews the ARM and Xively partner announcement.

“It will now take hours instead of months to make smart objects that can connect to the internet, British chip designers ARM Holdings plc promised Tuesday. ARM announced a collaboration with a software company that it promises will make it quicker and cheaper for companies to make products for the emerging sector.”

“The internet of things is the term given to the idea that everyday objects will be connected to the internet sharing their data. ARM designs the chips that go in the objects, and with the new collaboration,  startup LogMeIn Inc will provide the software that takes data from the object and feeds it into an app or website.”

Read the full article here: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/05/15/opening-up-the-internet-of-things/

What’s in a Name? Pachube to Cosm (beta) to Xively…

There have been a lot of questions about the name ‘Xively’; Why did we change, and why this particular name? The short answer is that we wanted to emphasize a clear evolution of the previous service into something larger, more innovative and more sophisticated.

We considered literally thousands of names and eventually converged on Xively. We chose Xively (zīv-lē) because it rhymes with ‘lively’ and with the “X” it suggests the interconnection of a new type of connected object.  Xively objects are not just ‘alive’ but ‘lively’.  When combined with our cloud services, these objects become active, reflexive and responsive.

Xively evolutionOne of the promises of the Internet of Things is an interconnected system of objects that can communicate not only with users, but with each other. This communication will inform and control their actions and interactions with the physical world, creating a system that is reflexively responsive to stimulus. With Xively’s Connected Object Cloud™, data and control can be securely and selectively shared between applications, users and even other objects.  Xively empowers an interconnected world, where intelligent machines – Xively objects – make reflexive, micro and macro systemic responses to stimuli from users, applications, machines and other devices, and will be a key driver in the grand IoT vision.

Accounts, data, devices: An explanation

Xively launched yesterday and, as sometimes happens, there were some things that we didn’t fully explain about the new system and processes, which has left existing users a little confused about the status of their data and their devices. We’d like to apologize for not communicating this clearly enough, but hope you understand that, with such a substantial augmentation of the previous service there are some things that fell through the cracks. Apart from expanding and reformulating the service itself, we put a huge amount of effort into building new libraries, tutorials, documentation, hardware examples, and even a pretty amazing Test Drive (with which you connect your mobile phone to a Xively channel in realtime in less than a minute), but we didn’t do so well in communicating changes that existing users might expect.

The most important thing to say up front is that you own your data, and that if you were a Cosm (or even an original Pachube) user, your data is safe and you don’t have to change anything about the way your existing devices use the API. You’ll lose out on some future benefits if you don’t start moving over to the new system, but the fact is that at every step we’ve taken since the very first launch, we have always been careful to support legacy devices and protect your data. There are, even now, devices out in the world that still use our v0 API from 5 years ago and haven’t updated their firmware.

We have a new process now (which we’ll explain a little more below) but any ‘feed’ (to use the Cosm terminology) that was in Cosm is now called a ‘legacy feed’. Legacy feed history will not be truncated – you can carry on using any feeds you already created just as you always have. You will find your ‘legacy feeds’ listed at the bottom of your Developer Workbench (which you will find at https://xively.com/develop). We had some problems redirecting Cosm console URLs to Xively Dev Workbench, which unfortunately made it seem like feeds had been deleted, but this should be resolved shortly and we can assure you all your feeds and all of your data are still there. If you have any trouble finding them please contact support with your username and we’ll have a look ASAP.

The new Xively process involves two stages (and there’s a detailed explanation here). The first stage is to use your Developer Workbench. You no longer create ‘feeds’ and ‘datastreams’ via the API, but instead you create Development Devices, which have ‘Channels’ using the Developer Workbench. Everybody using one of our free Developer accounts can create an unlimited number of Development Devices. The only limitation on Development Devices is that their data is deleted after 30 days – the principle being that these are devices you are experimenting with and have only transient need for data.

Then, once you have finished prototyping, the second stage is to deploy a working device as a Production Device (which you access via the Management Console). Production Devices have no limitation on their history (just like ‘feeds’ in Cosm). Users of our free developer accounts and those that purchase commercial service can both deploy Production Devices – the difference being that free users are limited to 5 devices with a total of 30 Channels while commercial customers can buy as many channels as they require. We think it’s really important to be able to use exactly the same tools and APIs to build one device as you would use to scale up to millions.

To reiterate, if you were a Cosm user your ‘legacy feeds’ are different to Development Devices, Production Devices and Channels, and therefore are not subject to these limitations, or having any history truncated. So, existing Cosm users have both ‘legacy feeds’ with unlimited history as well as up to 30 Channels of Production Devices with unlimited history.

A word about URLs: in Cosm you could visit a feed page, at a URL something like cosm.com/feeds/504. The same is true of Xively: you can find information both about ‘legacy feeds’ and Development & Production Devices at xively.com/feeds/504 (or whatever its ID is). Now, the data presentation will update in realtime as the values change. (Graphs require a click on a channel to expose). If you go to https://xively.com/feeds/YOUR_FEED_ID/workbench (which you will access directly via your Developer Workbench) you will have the same view, but with additional developer and debug tools to make working with them easier. Our focus has been to make it easier to build your products and manage your users or communities.

One other evolution we would like to describe here is how we handle data that users elect to make public. In the past, we haven’t had an explicit license applied to this data and there has been strong demand to formalise this. So, in Xively, if you make data public a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal license is applied (both on its page and in headers when requested via the API), which expresses your ownership of your data but your desire to make it much more useful and usable to others that might access the data. Read more about CC0 here.

There have been many questions about Air Quality Egg and other community projects. We will be updating those communities directly, but again the principle is that existing service will not be disrupted.

We hope this helps clear up some of the confusion about the status of people’s data and accounts. We know people have lots of questions about our plans for graphs on device pages – we have some advancements coming soon, please stay tuned. As always, if you have any questions please drop support a line and we will try to answer as quickly as possible.