Amazon Buys Startup 2lemetry for IoT Portfolio

Amazon (AMZN) wants to boost its Internet of Things (IoT) profile and has bought 2lemetry, a Denver, CO-based startup whose technology helps customers make actionable sense of the flood of data produced by connected devices both in the enterprise and retail settings.

Neither company disclosed terms of the deal.

TechCrunch reported that the e-commerce and cloud services giant, which has tiptoed into the IoT segment with smart home hardware, confirmed the deal.

“I can confirm that Amazon has acquired 2lemetry and we look forward to continuing to support 2lemetry customers,” an Amazon spokesperson said.

At this point, there’s no word as to how Amazon will fold 2lemetry into its operations but TechCrunch speculated the new acquisition could become part of Amazon’s Web Services unit, considering it already houses some of the company’s IoT enterprise activities.

2lemetry’s customers include Honeywell, the Demeter energy group and First Mile, an office recycling service. The company has raised some $9 million in investment capital, including a $4 million round earlier this year. One of its investors is Salesforce Ventures. The 2lemetry Integrate service, which enables companies to engage with data produced from devices with Salesforce, is featured at the Salesforce AppExchange app store.

TechCrunch suggested Amazon might deploy 2lemetry’s technology and talent to its Kinesis platform, which processes and analyzes high volume flows of data from a variety of sources in real time, enhancing it by extending the solution to machine-to-machine settings.

Or, Amazon could beef up its physical commerce efforts by using the 2lemetry software in retail settings deploying networks of beacons to inform shoppers of special offers or other relevant information, in an example TechCrunch described.

2lemetry is a member of the AllSeen Alliance, an IoT standards industry consortium and the Eclipse IoT Ecosystem. Its partners consist of hardware companies, application providers, telecommunications carriers and system integrators. Distributor Arrow Electronics (ARW) also handles its software and services.