IoT World: Canonical & Industry Leaders Drive IoT Commercialization

• Host of new Snappy Ubuntu Core-enabled devices demonstrate revenue opportunities in IoT
• First commercially-designed IoT devices with GE’s FirstBuild, Acer, Microsoft & DataArt

London and San Francisco, May, 11 2015 – Canonical is collaborating with some of the world’s smartest technology brands, including GE’s FirstBuild, Acer, Microsoft and DataArt, to reveal a slew of new and innovative IoT devices; all built on ‘Snappy’ Ubuntu Core and designed to delight developers and consumers-alike.

At IoT World this year, taking place in San Francisco on May 12 and 13, Canonical, GE’s FirstBuild, Acer, Microsoft and DataArt are joining forces to demonstrate how far IoT innovation has come over the last year. They will demonstrate the latest in highly innovative, next-generation connected devices for the home but also illustrate how the industry at-large is behind ‘Snappy’ Ubuntu Core as the natural choice when designing and deploying industrial and commercial IoT projects.

GE’s FirstBuild- ChillHub

GE Appliances, through its FirstBuild™ co-creation community, has developed ChillHub, the first commercially available IoT-enabled refrigerator on Snappy Ubuntu Core. Now available to consumers online, Chillhub allows personalization of the refrigerator and connectivity with an iOS app for design of connected refrigerator accessories.

Developed by FirstBuild community members, ChillHub is not only a refrigerator, but an open development platform designed for makers, hackers, tinkerers and developers. FirstBuild community members continue to collaborate on products and features to customize and create new uses for their refrigerators. ChillHub, an 18 cubic foot top freezer refrigerator, will retail for $999 and can be ordered through FirstBuild.com. Limited pre-orders will also be available at an early-bird price of $799.

Canonical and FirstBuild also recently collaborated at the HacktheHome hackathon, which saw 280 engineers, designers and makers compete for a generous prize fund offered by FirstBuild and Canonical and the honor of creating the most innovative new IoT apps on common household objects and appliances. Jason Chodyniecki and Eric Sage were awarded the prize fund and earned the distinct honor of creating the most innovative new IoT app – the “Crockwatch.”

After receiving his award, Jason Chodyniecki, Wi-Fi Connected Appliances Architect at GE Appliances said: “I think that Snappy is going to solve problems that are just now becoming apparent with the internet of things. It was good to get hands-on with the product, and I am excited to see what our friends at FirstBuild will be able to do with the platform as it evolves. I envision a world with home appliances that are controlled very differently than they are today, and I believe Snappy could help get us to that point.”

Acer

Acer BYOC™ (Build Your Own Cloud) and Canonical are collaborating on a range of IoT and cloud projects. The prototype of Acer’s aBeing One cross-platform smart center, will be showcased at Canonical’s stand (545) as the first to incorporate Snappy Ubuntu Core and AOP 3.0 (Acer Open C&C Platform 3.0) core technology. Acer and Canonical will demonstrate how this powerful cross-platform smart center can help consumers consolidate and share intelligence, and have full control of their many IoT devices. For developers, the aBeing series provides security, privacy, and minimizes costs for cloud service and product research, further demonstrating how a wider developer ecosystem can bring to market solutions, and provide a fantastic opportunity to see IoT designs brought to life and, potentially, commercialized.

Mark Yang, Director of IoT Solution of BYOC Business Unit at Acer, said: “We’re collaborating at a time when IoT projects are starting to become commercial realities. Our aim is to accelerate time to market for all those who are investing time, energy and creativity in IoT projects. Working together we can combine clever technology like Snappy with go-to-market experience, incentivizing the developer community to design more and more innovative Snappy apps to run on Acer hardware. This collaboration is just the start of more to come for the world of IoT.”

Microsoft and DataArt

Microsoft, DatArt and Canonical are showing how industrial predictive maintenance can be setup in minutes and how IoT, Cloud, Big Data, machine learning and Docker can all be integrated via Snappy Apps, DeviceHive and Juju Charms.

“With devices becoming smarter, smaller, and cost points dropping with increasing scale and demand, we are seeing exciting innovation in the IoT market. Smart industrial systems need secure information flow from and to millions of devices and systems to gain and act on data driven insights. DataArt, with their development of the DeviceHive platform, combines specialized technology and vertical expertise that can now be easily consumed via the Microsoft Azure Marketplace,” said Anko Duizer, Director Technical Evangelism & Development at Microsoft EMEA.

Snappy on Devices

‘Snappy’ Ubuntu Core is the smallest and most secure edition of Ubuntu. It is a super-lean, transactionally updated version of Ubuntu, perfect for inventors, technologists and the active and growing Ubuntu developer community; cloud container hosts and smart, connected devices. It powers drones, robots, network switches, mobile base stations, industrial gateways, home appliances and IoT home hubs.

“As visitors to IoT World will see, Snappy is an amazing platform for the new generation of cloud and device developers,” said Maarten Ectors, VP of IoT, Canonical. “The combination of an open platform with an app store that works across a very wide range of devices, from tiny embedded boards to high end switches and routers, has stimulated a rush of creativity in the maker and entrepreneur communities. The next phase is to demonstrate how IoT can be made commercially viable – we’ve taken an important step towards this goal here with GE, Acer, Microsoft and DataArt.”

The first generally available version of ‘Snappy’ Ubuntu Core is now available as part of the latest version of  Ubuntu 15.04. This release supports 64-bit Intel-based architectures, as well as ARM HF, providing a crisp common platform for device development that supports a very wide range of production hardware.

Click here to watch our founder, Mark Shuttleworth talk about ‘Snappy’ Ubuntu Core and how it’s driving next generation device development.