“ST and AliOS,” two magic words that open the path towards China’s first end-to-end turnkey platform for the Internet of Things (IoT). Signed on Oct 13, the collaboration between STMicroelectronics and Alibaba, China’s largest public cloud service provider and the fourth largest worldwide, brings together all the elements needed to create IoT nodes and gateways and connect them to the Cloud – simply and securely.
AliOS — Alibaba’s IoT operating system, just officially released — is immediately available on ST’s STM32 chips, the most popular microcontroller technology in China. Alongside microcontrollers – the tiny electronic brains inside all kinds of smart objects – ST provides all the other components engineers need to build IoT devices, including motion and environmental sensing, radio connectivity, power management, and security.
All the blocks
All the building blocks are there, but the beauty of the Alibaba/ST one-stop-shop IoT offering actually goes much further. Customers don’t need to worry about things like compatibility, interoperability, or security – all the software ingredients and support are already integrated, so designers can solely focus on creating their cloud-connected IoT applications.
The scope of use for intelligent, connected objects spans all aspects of our life, from wrist-worn smart wearables to smart locks and appliances in our homes, from smart parking systems to smart lighting and metering infrastructure in our cities. Add smart factories and all of the opportunities to control equipment and the millions of connected cars and roadside infrastructure and the potential is extraordinary. ST’s building blocks put it all within reach.
Alibaba’s mighty cloud-computing power, with over 2.3 million customers and world-class infrastructure, benefits from ST’s state-of-the-art technologies to tap the treasures of China’s IoT market that is expected to grow 30% a year and contain a third of the world’s 15 billion connected things in 2020.
Further information on IoT in the Alibaba cloud (in Chinese) can be found on https://market.aliyun.com/iot
