For those who came in late, IBM has an IoT Foundation cloud platform. Under the deal it will be linked to ARM's mbed-enabled devices to deliver analytics services.

It is a little odd given that both of them make and design chipsets, but they think that the fusion will enable far more data produced by autonomous IoT devices to be gathered, analysed and acted on.

Products powered by ARM's mbed chips will automatically register with the IoT Foundation on the SoftLayer infrastructure is built and connect with IBM's cloud analytics services.

IoT Foundation already includes analytics tools designed to cope with the big data explosion, access to IBM's Bluemix platform as a service, and security systems.

ARM said that connecting the two would enable delivery of actionable events to control equipment, or alerts and information to users, such as alarm messages on domestic appliances.