Mixing TRIRIGA with Bluemix and IoT

TRIRIGA remixed? With Bluemix and IoT? How? Well, let’s figure it out together. If you haven’t heard, probably the biggest IoT news in the last few weeks was the IBM announcement that it “will invest $3 billion over the next four years to establish a new Internet of Things (IoT) unit, and that it is building a cloud-based open platform designed to help clients and ecosystem partners build IoT solutions.”

What does “cloud-based open platform” remind me of? You guessed it: Bluemix. In fact, the news named a future offering called the IBM Bluemix IoT Zone where developers could “enrich existing business applications – such as enterprise asset management, facilities management, and software engineering design tools”. What is our “facilities management” application? You guessed it: TRIRIGA.

Potential future of TRIRIGA, Bluemix, and IoT

Hi, my name is Jay, and I’m an IBM TRIRIGA information developer at IBM. While it might be more direct to share my impressions from within our new IoT division, it might be more fun to show how a passing but perceptive observer outside IBM might figure out where TRIRIGA fits into the mix. After all, both perspectives might turn out to be similar. I might even learn more about what’s going on!

What are TRIRIGA, Bluemix, and IoT?

If you’ve read this far, then you probably have some rough ideas of what TRIRIGA, Bluemix, and IoT are. But for those less familiar, TRIRIGA (IWMS) is an enterprise-scale software solution that helps organizations to manage their real estate and facilities. Meanwhile, Bluemix (PaaS) is a cloud-based platform that enables developers to build and deliver cloud-based applications from the cloud.

What about IoT? Although the term “Internet of Things” isn’t specific to an IBM product or solution like IBM TRIRIGA or IBM Bluemix, the concept behind IoT is an internet-based network of connected physical objects — anything from clothing and appliances, to pets and cars, to bridges and factories — and deriving useful data or meaningful trends from the behavior of these interconnected objects.

This is where the IBM strategy or vision of IoT looks intriguing. As I noted above, IBM will “establish a new Internet of Things (IoT) unit” and help clients to “build IoT solutions”, including those that “enrich existing… facilities management” applications. If I was a perceptive observer outside IBM, then performing a Google search of “IBM facilities management” results in the first mention of TRIRIGA.

How would TRIRIGA, Bluemix, and IoT mix together?

Likewise, without knowing the nuts and bolts of the IBM strategy, an external observer can still take a few guesses from the pieces I’ve laid out. For example, the IBM Bluemix IoT Zone would enable developers to select IoT services from Bluemix, integrate IoT data from client sources, and then build and deploy IoT apps in the cloud. In theory, such IoT apps might also be built to talk to TRIRIGA apps.

Another guess is that IBM might offer individual cloud-based TRIRIGA services, similar to “TREES“, alongside the IoT services in Bluemix. Although I’m not too familiar with the technology that might be involved, an external observer might still guess this scenario. In this case, developers would select TRIRIGA-IoT services from Bluemix, integrate IoT data, and then build TRIRIGA-IoT apps in the cloud.

Yet another guess is that developers who build the above IoT apps or TRIRIGA-IoT apps on Bluemix (PaaS) might also build them to talk to our SaaS-based TRIRIGA “On Cloud” apps. Both of which — our PaaS and SaaS offerings — are hosted on our SoftLayer (IaaS) cloud infrastructure. For more SaaS info, our TRIRIGA SaaS demos and trials are available at our storefront-style Service Engage portal.

Finally, despite the dizzying predictions about SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS, a perceptive observer outside IBM wouldn’t forget the IoT hardware side of the TRIRIGA equation, as exemplified by MessageSight. MessageSight is “an appliance designed for the Internet of Things (IoT)” that “deploys into VMware and SoftLayer”. Its “virtual edition allows deployment into private and public cloud infrastructures”.

What are my final thoughts?

It’s funny. When I wrote my first cloud post as a cloud newbie 17 months ago, and my first IoT post as an IoT newbie 11 months ago, I never imagined that today, I’d be familiar enough to explore the possible relationships among TRIRIGA SaaS, BlueMix PaaS, SoftLayer IaaS, and MessageSight IoT. Even funnier, I learned more this week as an external observer than as an IBM TRIRIGA developer!

But it makes sense too. Sometimes a quiet inspection of the public news and product sites can cut through the noisy chatter of internal marketing hype. So what will happen to TRIRIGA, Bluemix, and IoT in another 11 or 17 months? Will any of the above guesses materialize sooner than 4 years? After all, 4 years is a long time. By then, the IoT might be consumed by the “Internet of People” (IoP).

IBM IoT

IBM TRIRIGA

IBM Bluemix (PaaS)

IBM IoT

IBM TRIRIGA

IBM TRIRIGA “TREES”

IBM TRIRIGA “On Cloud” (SaaS)

IBM SoftLayer (IaaS)

IBM Service Engage (SaaS) portal

IBM MessageSight (IoT)

IBM MessageSight (IoT)

Potential future of TRIRIGA, Bluemix, and IoT

Related articles

• Working like a startup at IBM (radar.oreilly.com)
• Is BlueMix a good mix for IBM, and you? (research.gigaom.com)
• IBM BlueMix: PaaS Play, Explained (www.informationweek.com)
• The Internet of Things Is Really the Internet of People (www.linkedin.com)
• IBM Internet of Things Foundation (IoT Foundation) (internetofthings.ibmcloud.com)
• Why “smart cities” should be an Internet of People, not Things (www.boingboing.net)
• With Blue Mix, IBM Services Meet the SoftLayer Cloud (www.datacenterknowledge.com)