Arrow Electronics and Avnet lock horns in IoT market

Arrow Electronics and Avnet, the big beasts of global distribution are going head to head on the IoT battleground. Keen to engage with and support engineers with their IoT designs, both companies have made announcements to support their strategies.

Very different approaches as it turns out. Arrow was fastest out of the blocks. Barely had London’s Big Ben stopped chiming in the New Year, then the distributor unveiled a proposed acquisition of eInfochips, which with its ability to provide custom hardware and software and new IoT business models expands what Arrow describes as its ‘sensor to sunset’ platform.

Buying eInforchips will add engineering, solution architecture, embedded software development, security, mobile device connectivity, app development, cloud configuration and management, and managed services including big-data analytics.

Avnet is staying in house for its solution. It has developed the IoTConnect cloud-based software platform and it debuted a portfolio of smart, market-ready connectivity solutions built around the platform at CES 2018 in Vegas.

Using Microsoft’s enterprise-grade Azure hybrid cloud computing service IoTConnect enables the seamless distribution and analysis of data across cloud and on-premise systems.

Avnet collaborated with 14 leading suppliers across its IoT partner ecosystem to develop a broad selection of market-ready connectivity solutions that leverage the IoTConnect platform to tackle business challenges common to many industry verticals, including manufacturing, medical, environmental, construction, retail, food processing and smart city.