Acer Welcomes Marvell, Hipad and Canonical to Join the BYOC™ Ecosystem to Innovate for World of IoT

Editor’s Summary
  • Continuing the expansion of the Acer BYOC™ ecosystem, Acer announces new partnerships with leading semiconductor company, Marvell, and one of China’s top smart mobile device makers, Hipad
  • Canonical, who announced the joining of the ecosystem last month, demos Snappy Ubuntu Core with Acer’s aBeing One smart center and open platform at Computex
Acer is showcasing numerous solutions and innovations with partners in its Build Your Own Cloud (BYOC™) ecosystem at Computex 2015. Among them, the leading fabless semiconductor company, Marvell, and one of China’s top smart mobile ODM companies, Hipad, have teamed up with Acer to demonstrate how BYOC solutions embedded in Marvell’s chipset can be used to empower Hipad’s smart home devices. In addition, Canonical is demonstrating its Snappy Ubuntu Core with Acer’s aBeing One smart center and open platform at Computex. The collaborations shown at Acer during Computex are just the start of much more to come for the world of IoT and the BYOC ecosystem. Acer’s BYOC smart module and hardware is using Marvell’s EZ-Connect Wi-Fi Microcontroller IoT platform. The module is built with a powerful Cortex-M3 microcontroller (88MC200) and a best-in-class 802.11n wireless radio (88W8801) that together provide a fully integrated hardware solution for IoT devices to connect to the Acer BYOC cloud. The software solution includes Marvell’s EZ-Connect software SDK complemented with libraries that integrate with BYOC services. The Marvell EZ-Connect platform based smart-module along with Acer BYOC services and mobile apps create a comprehensive smart home ecosystem complete with monitoring, controlling, notification, and data collection functionalities.

“Marvell is pleased to collaborate with Acer and Hipad to bring a complete IoT platform solution to the market,” said Philip Poulidis, vice president and general manager, Wireless and Internet of Things Business Units at Marvell. “The combined solution enables developers to rapidly develop and bring to market new and innovative IoT device, services, and applications.”

“Hipad has been working steadily to integrate Acer’s robust and flexible BYOC platform into our line of internet-connected and internet-ready products. With BYOC, we can provide a myriad of services to our 3G mobile wearable users, smart home appliances, and 3G/4G ready IPCAMs and GPS dash cams,” said Vincent Lai, CTO of IoT Business Unit at Hipad. “We can innovate and produce smart and intuitive usability by geo-leashing our product to activate or deactivate by proximity, for remote activation and actuation from across the globe. BYOC is a platform that allows Hipad to maximize our product’s capabilities, whilst providing a venue and environment to creatively develop and invent. What you see at Computex is just the tip of the iceberg. We have big plans for connectivity and the cloud. And with BYOC, we plan to realize our ambitions and designs for new and exciting services and user experiences.”

Acer is also collaborating with Canonical, the open source software provider behind Ubuntu, on a range of IoT and cloud projects. At Computex Taipei, visitors can discover how the Acer Open Platform incorporates the Snappy Ubuntu Core by Canonical for a smart home surveillance solution. In a setup comprising of the aBeing One smart center built on the Snappy Ubuntu Core, Acer and Canonical demonstrate how an intruder into a smart home is monitored by the PIR (passive infrared) motion sensor, which signals the IP camera to record a short video of the incident and stores it into the aBeing One. A message alert will then be sent to the home owner’s smartphone who can view the video instantly from the aBeing One and decide what actions to take.

“Acer is a very visionary IoT and cloud company that brings lots of exciting new solutions to market every day,” said Maarten Ectors, VP of IoT, Proximity Cloud and Next-Gen Networking, Canonical Group Limited. “Snappy Ubuntu Core on top of Acer's products will enable developers to let their imagination run free.”

The demonstration is just one example of the opportunities to be explored and potentially commercialized following the announcement of the partnership between the two companies at IoT World last month in San Francisco. Unveiled alongside the partnership announcement was a prototype of Acer’s aBeing One cross-platform smart center built on the Snappy Ubuntu Core and AOP 3.0 (Acer Open C&C Platform) core technology. Acer was among the leading technology partners that joined forces with Canonical to demonstrate how far IoT innovation has come over the last year or so and the scope of possibilities.

Acer and Canonical illustrated 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 solutions to market, and provide a great opportunity to see IoT designs brought to life.

“Our aim is to accelerate time-to-market for all those who are investing time, energy, and creativity in IoT projects,” said Maverick Shih, president of the BYOC Business Group at Acer, “Working together we can combine smart technologies like Snappy Ubuntu Core with Acer’s go-to-market experience, enabling the developer community to design more innovative Snappy apps to run on Acer hardware.”

In the spirit of the Wangdao philosophy in benevolence, Acer welcomes more participants to join the ever-growing BYOC ecosystem. By connecting with the vast and diversified range of IoT devices/solutions on the market, each member can be empowered to interoperate and function to their greatest potential, fulfilling Wangdao’s core belief in balancing the interests of all stakeholders.

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About Acer

Founded in 1976, Acer is one of the world's top ICT companies with a presence in more than 160 countries. As Acer evolves with the industry and changing lifestyles, it is focused on enabling a world where hardware, software and services will fuse with one another, creating ecosystems and opening up new possibilities for consumers and businesses alike. Acer's 7,700 employees are dedicated to the research, design, marketing, sale, and support of products and solutions that break barriers between people and technology. Please visit www.acer.com for more information.