Is IoT Ready for Prime Time? New IoT-Focused Funding Suggests Yes

Aria Systems has announced a new funding round, which injects more cash into the growing Internet of Things (IoT) market and Aria’s efforts to build partnerships with companies investing in this space.

Aria focuses on partnering with companies to establish recurring-revenue streams. Current major customers include Red Hat, Experian, VMware and Zipcar, according to the company.

On Feb. 18 Aria announced new funding totaling $50M. The company says the investment reflects its “continued enterprise success across verticals, including automotive, entertainment, high tech, medical and telecommunications, as well as a wide array of innovative IoT plays.” In announcing the news, it placed particular emphasis on its partnerships with companies that have recently launched IoT solutions.

As funding rounds go, this one is of average size. But of note is the apparent investor interest in driving IoT. That’s significant because, despite all of the talk about IoT over the past year, real-world IoT solutions are not yet ubiquitous. And when you consider that IoT is actually not at all a new idea, you begin to wonder whether the recent spike in IoT interest is mere hype that will die out soon enough.

Aria’s funding success suggests it’s not. Significant amounts of cash are now entering the channel to drive IoT innovation. Companies hoping to make actual money off of IoT — as opposed to talking about it while not really deploying production-ready IoT products — are seeing new opportunities for building IoT-related revenue streams through partnerships with companies like Aria.

That doesn’t mean we’re ready to bet everything on the IoT hype not turning out to flop in the same way that, say, IBM’s OS/2 operating system did two decades ago. But the funding success of companies like Aria suggests that things are moving in a positive direction, and that the channel can now safely start taking IoT seriously.