Penton and Avnet (AVT) a leading global technology distributor, today launched "It's an IoT World" University, a first-of-its-kind digital education center that offers real-world learning solutions covering the spectrum of the Internet of Things (IoT).

"It's an IoT World" University brings together a host of industry leading innovators including Avnet, and five platinum partners, IBM Bluemix, Texas Instruments, NXP, Intel and Microsoft whose expertise spans the gamut of technologies and solutions enabling the IoT.

"The IoT is connecting humans to physical objects in ways never imagined. With near ubiquitous connectivity available, combined with sensors and data analytics technologies, the ability to capture and analyze vast amounts of data can be put to use for business, cities and consumer value," said Paul Miller, Group President, Penton. "Like all things that are worthwhile, it is not easy and there are major training and information needs that must be addressed to move the market forward, which is exactly what this University will do for our audiences in IoT engineering, the industrial IoT, smart energy and buildings and smart cities."

"It's an IoT World" University provides access to courses on everything from sensor design and leveraging collected data to infrastructure and gateway options, multi-modal connectivity considerations and implementing cloud-based IoT applications. University attendees will study practical, market-specific examples for achieving interoperability and analytics capitalization in a predictive and prescriptive manner to tangibly deliver results to their company's bottom line.

In addition to courses such as Securing Devices and Data, and the IBM Watson ™ IoT Platform, live Q&A is available, and the training center has 24/7 access to additional education content such as white papers, videos, product information and online tools created to enable attendees to get their concepts to market faster.

Avnet is also the exclusive diamond sponsor of IoT Emerge, an event that targets the opportunities and challenges posed by IoT devices, systems and services, as well as a launch sponsor of the IoT Institute, a business unit of Penton focused on the rapidly growing world of the Internet of Things (IoT).

To learn more about "It's an IoT World," visit http://avnet.me/iotworld.