For device manufacturers, IoT shifts their operating model from selling hardware to selling hardware products connected to digital applications. Today, device manufacturers often have trouble recouping data costs associated with free applications and supporting an ecosystem of third-party devices, apps and services. Manufacturers have to either absorb the data costs of operating devices in the field, or factor in anticipated data costs to the retail price of devices.

Samsung ARTIK Cloud Monetization addresses this problem by providing a complete brokering, metering and payments system. It gives device manufacturers an easy way to make their devices interoperable with third-party devices and applications, and monetize data useage. With the Samsung ARTIK Cloud developer portal, device manufacturers have the flexibility to define service plans that meet their business needs. Samsung ARTIK Cloud brokers and meters user interactions against the defined plan, and manages upgrades, payments and revenue share back to the device OEM.

“Samsung is committed to growing the IoT data economy,” said James Stansberry, senior vice president and global head of ARTIK at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung ARTIK Cloud Monetization uniquely positions us to help device manufacturers find new ways to make money from IoT and enable more applications for their customers. This is part of our long-term strategy to facilitate the development of secure IoT products and services, promote wide-scale interoperability, and create a platform and business model for an entire IoT ecosystem to thrive. Like the mobile phone industry, IoT will be driven by open systems, interoperability and support from innovative applications.”

“Samsung ARTIK is leading the way in helping device manufacturers easily make their devices interoperable with third-party devices and applications, as well as be able to monetize data use, and we are excited to be part of the journey,” said Pete Horton, vice president of market development at Legrand. “The new data broker model helps Legrand focus on our core competency of building market leading devices, while also allowing us to benefit from Samsung’s open ecosystem of third-party apps and services. It’s the missing piece to the IoT puzzle.”

“We’re excited to partner with Samsung ARTIK on the new monetization model,” said Stefan Grosjean, founder and CEO of Smappee, provider of smart energy solutions. “Increasing the reach of devices while also providing a path to monetization is key to the successful evolution of IoT.”

“The problem with IoT is that many hardware companies are selling products without a clear view on sustainable business models. There’s a lot of pressure now to monetize data,” said Dilip Sarangan, global research director, IoT & digital transformation at Frost & Sullivan. “Samsung ARTIK^TM Cloud Monetization is out front in addressing a crucial need in the market. It can help hardware developers monetize solutions without necessarily putting in all the effort themselves. This is a huge value proposition, especially on the consumer side, which has an untapped potential, but also on the enterprise side.”

For more information about the Samsung ARTIK platform and development tools, please visit http://artik.io and http://artik.cloud.

About Samsung ARTIK Cloud

Samsung ARTIK Cloud is an open data exchange platform for the Interoperability of Things (IoT). Samsung ARTIK Cloud provides easy-to-use, open APIs and tools to securely collect, store, and act on any data from any connected device or cloud service. Samsung ARTIK Cloud is designed to accelerate time to market and revenue of a new generation of IoT solutions and services. More information about Samsung ARTIKCloud can be found at https://artik.cloud/.

Six New York-based developers, Jesse Lee, Geoff Woo, Helen Huang, Lara Mendelssohn, Shea Molloy, and Tony Li won the M.A.D. Challenge. Their groundbreaking ElectroDialysis Desalinator for Irrigation (EDDI) system enables farmers to separate salt from water before they irrigate, allowing them to use only the necessary amount of water needed to achieve maximum crop yield. Using the SAMSUNG ARTIK IoT platform, the EDDI system controls smart activation of its device’s pumps and valves, while collecting data related to water salinity and flow. Smart activation also helps reduce water waste.

The team built the EDDI system after studying the various large-scale changes that happen during a drought crisis and how those changes affect people and ecosystems that are susceptible to changes in water abundance. Together, the winners will receive a check for $100,000. The M.A.D. global challenge drew more than 500 entries from 57 countries, awarding $210,500 in prizes overall. The EDDI developers’ next step is to continue honing their innovation and one day offer it to farmers everywhere.

“We’re a small group of friends who care deeply about solving global problems with technology,” said Jesse Lee, EDDI developer team lead. “Working with the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform was a great experience for us, as it provided a giant canvas to create a system of infinite possibility.” He added, “The challenge has given us the lift we need to reach even further into the promise IoT technology offers.”

Second place runner-up, Ness leveraged the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform to develop a system that saves water that’s normally wasted by people while waiting for their water taps and showers to get hot. Ness can save 200 gallons per household per month. The Tadpole Automation and Monitoring System, the third place runner-up, leveraged the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform to reduce the amount of water needed to grow food by over 90 percent compared to traditional methods. A diverse mix of judges representing state government officials, venture capitalists, and green tech industry leaders evaluated the innovation projects and selected the winning and runner-up teams and technology.

Samsung identified drought as the focus for the IoT maker challenge, after witnessing firsthand the devastating impact of the California drought that started in 2011. Samsung reviewed the entries and narrowed the pool down to 150 contenders, providing complimentary SAMSUNG ARTIK 5 and SAMSUNG ARTIK 10 development kits to the contenders for their projects. The judging criteria was based on; creativity and originality of the idea; and technical implementation, including how well the idea was executed by developers, and how well they utilized the SAMSUNG ARTIK IoT platform in their project. Additional criteria included the benefits and impact on the California water crisis and on droughts in other parts of the world as well as the overall user experience.

“We were extremely impressed by the EDDI team. They developed a prototype to desalinate the water, and they also gathered and leveraged data from various sources to manage the salinity in water specific to different plants,” said Curtis Sasaki, VP of Ecosystems at Samsung. “The potential for IoT is incredible for all kinds of looming issues. We’re delighted the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform is playing a vital role in inspiring developers and makers to create a better future. We have a tremendous opportunity to think big and address global issues in entirely new ways.”

To learn more about the finalists and the winner of the program, please visit http://artik.devpost.com/.

Compelling Statistics:

• Water Intensive: agriculture accounts for 70% of the world’s water consumption (UNESCO)
• Some experts estimate that as much as 50% of irrigation water is wasted due to evaporation, wind, or runoff caused by inefficient irrigation methods and systems. (U.S. EPA)
• Approximately a third of the world’s population, or 2.5 billion people, are living in water-stressed areas. (Growing Blue)

The SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud, along with the previously announced SAMSUNG ARTIK family of integrated IoT modules, enables faster and simpler development of new enterprise, industrial, and consumer applications. The SAMSUNG ARTIK modules and SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud are an open platform including a best-in-class family of integrated production-ready modules, advanced software, development boards, drivers, tools, security features, and cloud.

“Our vision for the ARTIK platform is an end-to-end experience that reduces the obstacles, challenges, and time-to-market for IoT solutions,” said Young Sohn, President & Chief Strategy Officer, Samsung Electronics. “We’re excited to announce the SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud after three years of development and feedback from hundreds of developers. Unlike many other IoT cloud platforms, ARTIK Cloud breaks down data siloes between devices and enables a new class of IoT applications and services.  The launch of this exciting new platform not only signals Samsung’s foray into the cloud services market but reinforces our belief that, by creating powerful open platforms, we can harness the information generated by IoT to develop new insights and new approaches to address the major global challenges of today and tomorrow.”

Companies face numerous challenges when connecting different devices and cloud services together into unified experiences. These challenges include: collecting data from a diverse set of devices using a variety of protocols; enabling legacy, new, and third-party devices and cloud services to interact with each other with minimal effort; storing data from siloed devices in a single location and deriving meaningful insights; managing data security and privacy; and providing developers with easy-to-use APIs and tools.

“As more and more consumer IoT devices are created and brought to market, the need for interoperability becomes paramount as it is the key to creating more compelling and integrated experiences.  The need for an open cloud solution that can work with any connected device, and with other cloud services is critical for broader consumer adoption,” said BK Yoon, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics. “The launch of ARTIK Cloud is extremely exciting because it promises to not only help Samsung connect our diverse portfolio of products, but also enable other companies to participate in a growing IoT ecosystem.”

“SmartThings believes that having integrated experiences within one unified application will simplify the user experience across a wide range of devices and services,” said Alex Hawkinson, CEO of SmartThings. “It is hugely beneficial that the new Samsung ARTIK Cloud can easily add more devices and services that SmartThings users can immediately take advantage of. As SmartThings continues to expand our offering beyond the home, open solutions like ARTIK Cloud can bring more devices into our open ecosystem as we aim to deliver even more IoT benefits to our customers together.”

How SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud Empowers IoT Developers and Enterprise Customers

The SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud makes it extremely easy to connect all devices – those powered by ARTIK modules and by other modules. Using SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud, companies can securely collect, store, and act on any data from any connected device or cloud service. With easy-to-use, open APIs to ingest and query data, and powerful tools to visualize and act on the data, ARTIK Cloud empowers developers and solution providers to build new innovative IoT apps and services.

The SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud is highly scalable, with an architecture designed to support the billions of IoT devices expected in the next few years, while keeping latency low to enabling fast interactions. Key features of ARTIK Cloud include:

Device and Data Interoperability: Easily enable devices to communicate with other devices or cloud services.

• Device Manifests: Rapidly onboard any device using a universal language to describe device states and actions.
• Multi-Protocol Connectors: Connect any device to the cloud using multiple protocols – REST/HTTP, Websockets, MQTT, and CoAP.
• Cloud Connectors: Connect to any cloud service and collect data from it.
• Heterogeneous Data Collection: Collect any data (continuous, discrete, real time, or historical) from any device or 3rd party cloud.
• Two Way Communication: Securely exchange messages between device and cloud, even on low power devices such as wearables and end-node sensors.
• Data Normalization and Analytics: Gain fast access to data, statistics, and aggregations with multiple backends to store, replicate, and index data.

Security & Privacy: Secure device, app, and user interactions and protect data privacy

• Secure Device Registration: Securely connect devices to the cloud using TLS, secure element, and certificates issued by a trusted certificate authority.
• Authentication and Authorization: Secure every device, app, and user interaction with open Internet standards based authentication and authorization.
• Privacy Management: Protect data privacy with built-in identity and permissions management.

Developer Tools: Empower developers to build new IoT apps using easy-to-use, open APIs, SDKs, and tools

• Universal Data Access APIs: Collect, and query data from disparate devices using easy-to-use, open APIs.
• SDKs: Enable developers to easily build apps and services using a number of mobile and platform SDKs: Objective C / iOS, Java / Android, JavaScript, Swift, PHP, Python, Ruby, Scala, and C#; as well as Tizen 3.0 when released.
• Rules Engine: Easily trigger cross-device actions and alerts with a powerful built in rules engine.
• Visualization Tools: Visualize data from disparate devices in context.
• Developer Portal: Increase developer productivity with self-service access to rich API documentation, API console, blogs, samples, forums, and more.
• API-first: Manage and extend platform entities using built-in REST APIs.

Companies are reimagining how data from many connected devices can be used to build innovative apps and services. Legrand, a global leader in electrical and digital building infrastructures, is working with Samsung to connect the Legrand Cloud platform to the SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud to drive the Internet of Things revolution in the building sector.

“Legrand is excited to partner with SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud to enable new smart solutions for buildings,” said Ernesto Santini, Legrand VP Innovation and Systems. “To be connected to the ARTIK Cloud is another step in our openness strategy, which aims to make Legrand’s legacy devices and new smart devices interoperable with other connected products, and increases the value we deliver to our users.”

Digibe Software is also embracing IoT and the SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud. The company delivers products for the industrial Internet helping customers optimize assets and connect data from machines, databases and people in meaningful ways. “Digibe is excited to partner with ARTIK Cloud to connect the worlds of IoT and enterprise collaboration,” said Pierre Lecointre, co-founder and CTO of Digibe. “The APIs and developer tools in ARTIK Cloud helped us deliver, in less than 2 months, a solution to access siloed IoT asset data and trigger collaboration to address anomalies – directly from Salesforce.”

Any company – enterprises, start-ups, device makers, IoT operators, and developers – can initially start using the SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud for free by visiting artik.cloud. Using simple pay-as-you-go tiered pricing, customers can upgrade to the tier of service that’s right for them.

Samsung is currently working with select enterprise customers. If you would like enterprise pricing, please contact us at artik.cloud/pricing.

Samsung Developer Conference 2016

The Samsung team supporting the SAMSUNG ARTIK platform will be at Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco showcasing demonstrations and technical sessions. For more information or to schedule a meeting, please contact ssic@ssi.samsung.com.