BlackBerry Limited has unveiled a series of initiatives, codenamed Project Ion, to help businesses easily connect people, devices and machines, and derive value from these connections. Project Ion is a cornerstone of BlackBerry’s vision to offer end-to-end solutions for the Internet of Things.

“As connectivity costs continue to fall and connected technologies become pervasive, a new market is emerging, the Internet of Things. Billions of connections, generating trillions of transactions and exabytes of data daily, will require platforms that can operate securely on a global scale. No other company is in a better position than BlackBerry to provide the technological building blocks, applications and services needed to enhance productivity, improve real-time decision making and deliver on the vision of the Internet of Things”, said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry.

Project Ion was announced at the O’Reilly Solid Conference, San Francisco. It will offer the resources necessary to access massive amounts of data from multiple disparate sources and distill it into meaningful, actionable information using open source and third party analytic tools. This deeper insight will empower companies and organizations across a range of industries. These include doctors and caregivers who require real-time diagnosis information to improve patient care, consumer products companies seeking new ways to better understand and engage with their customers, insurers pursuing more accurate risk profile information and manufacturers in need of better logistics and control data.

According to Forrester Research, Inc., “New smart products and the systems that connect them will eventually provide users with more personalized experiences. By collecting and combining both personal data and contextual information from the surrounding environment in real time, these products will give individuals experiences that serve them in their immediate moment of need.”

Project Ion will focus on developing a host of Internet of Things resources, including:

• A secure public application platform that will enable a new generation of IoT applications that can access massive amounts of data from multiple sources and allow businesses to make timely, informed decisions. Powered by QNX® technology and BlackBerry secure enterprise mobility management, this platform will securely manage data from millions of end points across multi-device, multi-platform environments.
• Facilitation of an Internet of Things ecosystem consisting of partners, carriers and application developers looking to connect an ever-growing number of Internet-enabled devices on a secure public applications platform.
• Strategic partnerships, including membership in the Industrial Internet Consortium™ (IIC), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to driving standards-based technologies for industry, academia and government to accelerate the development and availability of connected technologies. BlackBerry is also one of the founding members of the Application Developer Alliance (ADA), an association that focuses on advancing application development while helping to solve current challenges such as security and privacy.