BlackBerry unveils M2M offering called “Project Ion”

After hinting that BlackBerry would look to become a major M2M player, the company today unveiled what it is calling the “cornerstone” of its “internet of things” offering, called Project Ion.

At the O’Reilly Solid Conference, which takes place today and tomorrow in San Francisco, CEO John Chen drilled down on his vision with a bit more detail.

“As connectivity costs continue to fall and connected technologies become pervasive, a new market is emerging – the Internet of Things,” he said. “Billions of connections, generating trillions of transactions and exabytes of data daily, will require platforms that can operate securely on a global scale. No other company is in a better position than BlackBerry to provide the technological building blocks, applications and services needed to enhance productivity, improve real-time decision making and deliver on the vision of the Internet of Things.”

Project Ion, says the company, will allow access to “massive amounts of data” from multiple sources, which it says will allow businesses to make timely, informed decisions. The project will roll out in a beta in which it will give developers and companies close to BlackBerry first crack.

Unlike the hyper competitive mobile space, M2M might offer BlackBerry a place where it has a lot of runway. Across town from the O’Reilly conference, at Cisco Live, Cisco executive Mala Anand was underscoring what executives at that company think will ultimately become a $19-trillion market. Cisco says the number of connected devices exceeded the world population by late 2012 and will rise to 15 billion by 2015 and 40 billion by 2020.

At press time, shares of BlackBerry on the TSX were up .3% to $7.925.

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