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Synnex Drives into
Connected Cars
Watson AI Goes on Public Display
IT and business process ser-
vices master distributor Synnex has
adding connected car capabilities
to its portfolio. The agreement with
CalAmp falls under Synnex’s Mo-
bilitySolv group and strengthens the
distributor’s IoT portfolio by offering
CalAmp’s cellular routers, private
radios, gateway products, and device
configuration and management tools.
Synnex resellers also have ac-
cess to CalAmp’s line of Vanguard
ruggedized cellular routers, which
are enabled with smart-vehicle tech-
nology and seamlessly integrate with
CalAmp’s telematics intelligence
engine. Vanguard products allow
end users to continuously monitor
their vehicles’ operating environment
and respond instantly to threshold
conditions such as motion, location,
geo-zone crossings and custom
parameters. Additionally, telemat-
ics functionality enables Vanguard
routers to provide access to engine
diagnostic data to streamline main-
tenance, track vehicle location and
speed, and monitor key driver be-
havior metrics such as hard braking,
cornering and acceleration.
“The agreement comes at a time
when resellers are looking to their
distributor to help them capitalize on
the rapid explosion of IoT enable-
ment in the IT channel, and we are
excited to rise to meet their needs in
this space across several key vertical
markets by adding CalAmp,” said Tim
Acker, vice president, Mobility and
Connected Solutions, Synnex.
The “Jeopardy”-playing artificial intelligence (AI) IBM supercomputer
known as Watson has opened a West Coast hub called Watson West, com-
plete with an Experience Center designed to show off how big data, artificial
intelligence and machine learning can solve very human problems.
The brand-new San Francisco hub has opened its door to the public
and has a special focus on the medical sector. It features multiple life-sized
display screens to show how Watson filters health information to run diag-
nostics and pathology to find the most logical treatments. The company has
partnered with Apple and multiple health apps as well.
“It’s going to be a long time before we can build a brain, so right now,
we need to do it in components to solve specific problems,” Jeff Welser,
vice president of IBM Research Almaden, told the
San Jose Business
Journal
. “We are trying to put out more of our cognitive technologies in
the coming year so that people can start playing with them even before
they are really fully baked. That’s fairly new for us.”
It’s not all healthcare: Watson is also being applied to cybersecurity to
anticipate the moves of bad actors, and in one example at the Experience
Center, Watson instantly sorts through virtually every Ted Talk video to
mine specific phrases and topics based on voice recognition.
IBM is also working with BMW on using Watson to “personalize the
driving experience and creating more intuitive driver support systems for
cars of the future.” No doubt with visions of a real-life Knight Rider, BMW
will have some researchers work out of IBM’s $200 million Watson Inter-
net of Things headquarters in Munich as part of the agreement.
$95,000
Expected average spending on IoT by mid-market firms
surveyed by Techaisle. Includes investment in hardware
and deployment services as well as software.
8
Channel
Vision
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January - February, 2017
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