Processor technology company ARM announced a software platform and operating system intended to “simplify and speed up” the creation and deployment of internet of things (IoT) products.

The launch has been supported by the creation of a partner ecosystem, with backers including Ericsson, Freescale, IBM, KDDI, Marvell, NXP, Renesas, ST, Telenor Connexion and Telefonica.

Krisztian Flautner, general manager of the IoT business at ARM, said: “Today’s IoT devices largely exist in isolation, and it has been impossible to realise a truly interconnected world where devices are interoperable with many different cloud services.”

The mbed IoT Device Platform is built around open standards, and will “bring Internet protocols, security and standards-based manageability into one integrated solution optimised for energy and cost-constrained devices”.

It includes mbed OS, a free operating system for ARM-based devices that “consolidates the fundamental building blocks of the IoT in one integrated set of software components”. It includes security, communication and device management features.

It will be available for mbed partners in the fourth quarter, with the first production devices in 2015.

Also available is a licensable server platform, which ARM said “provides the required server-side technologies to connect and manage devices in a secure way”. The technology also provides a bridge between protocols designed for IoT devices and the APIs used by web developers, to simplify integration.

mbed Device Server is available now.

And the mbed.org website is also being positioned as “the focus point for a community of more than 70,000 developers around mbed”.