This week’s Smart DevOps roundup features a fresh round of seed funding to create an Internet of Things (IoT) application ecosystem, an advanced software platform for the global distribution of IoT deployments, and a new IoT developer platform.

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relayr gets $2.3M funding

relayr has secured a $2.3 million round of funding from unnamed U.S. and Switzerland-based investors, which will go towards the company’s U.S. expansion as well as the creation of an Internet of Things app ecosystem. Though it will be expanding its presence in the states, it will not be abandoning its business in Germany, as it will also be looking for a larger headquarters facility to accommodate its team expansion.

relayr previously raised about $317 million from friends and family and was near closing a seed round exceeding $600 million earlier this year, but received the $2.3 million funding from different investors.

The company is known for its products including the WunderBar, its IoT hardware dev kit that looks like a chocolate bar; its software development kits for Android and iOS; and the OpenSensor cloud, which is the company’s cloud-based solution for sending, receiving and saving data from sensors.

Upgraded platform for global IoT deployments

ThingWorx Inc. announced the availability of ThingWorx Platform v5.0, which is a rapid application development platform for the Internet of Things. ThingWorx was the first software platform designed to build and run connected apps.

ThingWorx Platform v5.0 offers flexible deployment options, as well as its next generation patented AlwaysOn protocol, which delivers an efficient and secure communications protocol for low latency bi-directional communications that can be tuned for minimized power consumption and bandwidth usage to significantly reduce operating costs and total cost of ownership. ThingWorx’s newest version also comes with its MatrixMultitenancy Security Model to enables simple, secure visibility and access control to devices and information that directly maps to complex business ecosystems.

Sigfox wants to be the default IoT platform

French startup Sigfox allows small, connected devices to talk with their servers while using low energy and cheap hardware. Now Sigfox wants to turn this network into an IoT platform for developers. In order accomplish this, Sigfox hired Cédric Giorgi as Head of Startup Relations.

As a platform for developers, Sigfox’s network will listen, catch the signal and and send the gathered data to the developer’s servers. Sigfox uses very low frequency for its network which allows it to charge customers at a low cost as it doesn’t have to deal with paying for expensive licenses.

photo credit: PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE via photopin cc