Semtech and SAS match IoT analytics with LoRaWAN edge-to-cloud

Semtech and SAS announced a collaboration on Wednesday to expand the use of data analytics for industrial automation, asset tracking, agriculture and environmental management.

Their combined technologies are set to address an ambitious set of goals: flood prevention, livestock wellness and precision agriculture for global food production and better energy forecasting to lower risk and to maximize grid efficiency.

The companies said they will use LoRaWAN connectivity with SAS IoT analytics to simplify development of IoT solutions.  Their focus is on edge-to-cloud IoT solutions for faster, more intelligent decisionmaking.  Semtech produces analog and mixed-signal semiconductors and software and has been a primary proponent of the LoRaWAN standard.

The collaboration comes admidst an explosion of sensors and devices that can collect data at the edge of massive networks.  This expansion comes even as a recent Forrester survey found that 80% of business executives see a years-long labor shortage of software developers and a global chip supply shortage as impediments to their desired IoT expansion.

Some business executives have found the IoT vision expressed by many networking companies 10 years ago to have foundered in the last two years, which is partly behind the impetus for a matchups of companies such as Semtech and SAS.  In another recent example, Semtech recently announced a collaboration with Intel to collaborate on chipsets for lidar technology, another kind of edge hardware used in robots, autonomous vehicles and drones in the expanding universe of IoT devices.

Semtech is 61 years old with 32 locations globally, but with fewer than 2,000 employees and $548 million in 2020 revenues. By comparison, SAS has about 14,000 employees and its revenues topped $3 billion in 2019.

LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) is part of the LoRa low-power modulation technique derived from chirp spread spectrum technology developed by Cycleo of France and acquired by Semtech.   Semtech was the founding member of the LoRa Alliance.

SAS’s IoT approach relies on sending edge device data to the cloud—Microsoft Azure in this case--for analytics and decisionmaking.  Since LoRaWAN is a cloud-based protocol, a tie-up with SAS IoT and Semtech is logical.

“IoT is forcing a fundamental shift of business and operational strategies as organizations adopt new models for agile IT, edge analytics and platform-based security,” said Jason Mann, vice president of IoT at SAS, in a statement. “SAS IoT and Semtech are building an ecosystem of partners to drive the right digital infrastructure strategy to harness IoT data and enable the right set of applications that deliver meaningful results.”