There's been a steady drip of IoT (Internet of Things)-related acquisitions in recent months, and Verizon's purchase of Sensity Systems is one of the latest. Here are the key details from Verizon's announcement:
Verizon has developed an array of connected-intelligent solutions including parking, lighting, traffic management and security that improve livability, resiliency and public safety for local communities.The company’s Smart Communities organization, which is a part of its IoT business, is also simplifying the creation of IoT applications through ThingSpace.
Sensity Systems capitalizes on conversions to LED lighting – a process that will affect 4 billion lights worldwide over the next few years – to create a high-speed, sensor-based, multiservice IoT platform. Sensity now has 42 smart city installations across the globe supplied through its ecosystem partners that have enabled facility and municipal lighting owners to link energy efficiency and cost savings to the improvement of business goals such as public safety, parking control, asset management and analytics.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but Techcrunch speculates it's worth in the hundreds of millions. It comes not long after Verizon plunked down $2.4 billion for Fleetmatics, which sells a software platform for tracking trucks through GPS, and a few months after it bought Telogis, which sells connected-car technologies that are used by the likes of Ford.
Verizon's deal-making ties into a broader trend ongoing in the IoT market, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland.
V"erizon has been conducting a portfolio-building exercise in IoT with Sensitivity Systems their latest move, as have other players intent on building a position in the IoT market," he says. "The challenge is the combination of diversity of IoT-based innovative business services appearing in the market combined with their small individual revenue capabilities."
"Whether you're an infrastructure, data, or managed cloud services provider the challenge is the same—to build a range of IoT business services where the business value far exceeds the sum of the individual parts. The relatively large acquisition sums being paid cover both the additional IoT revenue streams but also, and possibly of even greater value, the acquisition of a customer base into which the other IoT services can be offered."
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