Yet another Internet of Things (IoT) “platform” was announced recently: the RuBAN platform by Davra Networks. I enclosed the term in quotes not to question specifically whether this is a platform, but just as a reminder that the term “platform” means little – or perhaps it means too much, since there are many of them, and they’re all different in function and scope.

RuBAN targets not the Consumer IoT (CIoT), nor does it address the manufacturing side of IIoT. They do target Things that haven’t been connected before, relying on whatever instrumentation or data generation is already there (in other words, they don’t provide the sensors) – consistent with the brownfield approach we discussed the other day.

Examples of the applications on which they’re focusing are fleet management, mass transit ticketing and maintenance, oil/gas/mining, and security. The common denominators here are far-flung, distributed, and, often, mobile. As such, the cellular network plays an important part, much as we saw with Jasper the other day.

Davra’s direct customers will not be the owners of these networks, but rather the VARs building the networks and services. It’s a development environment intended for rapid deployment. The idea is to have a high-level way to quickly assemble rules, establish reporting, and devise alerts using point-and-click/drag-and-drop methodologies rather than detailed programming.

It’s an all-software solution, with gateways providing the key functionality. The gateways implement a “fog” function, executing rules and filtering data into the cloud. Each vehicle in a fleet, for example, may have a single gateway that channels location information (especially when establishing a geo-fence) or engine and other vehicle performance data for transmission into the cloud, where big-data functions can take over.

You can read more in their announcement, but, as with most platforms, a conversation will probably be needed to get the nitty-gritty details.