Internet-of-things (IoT) development platform Particle Industries Inc. is going after the enterprise with a cloud IoT platform that large companies can use to quickly build IoT products in what the company claims is as little as six months.

Particle, which changed its name from Spark Labs Inc. last year, said enterprise developers will be able to use its hardware and software toolkits to produce prototypes in less than a day using hardware that costs less than $20. They can then move through pilot tests of hundreds or thousands of units and into a full-scale rollout of 100,000 units or more.

The company estimates that enterprise IoT development times typically run 18 to 36 months and cost millions of dollars. As a result, “Many businesses’ IoT initiatives flounder or fail,” said Zach Supalla, Particle co-founder and CEO, in a prepared statement. “Companies that work with Particle actually ship their products.”

Particle grew out of the hobbyist “maker” market, and today claims to be the largest pure-play IoT development platform. The company has raised about $4.2 million in multiple seed and crowdfunding rounds.

The enterprise cloud offering has actually been in operation for months and has signed up customers like Keurig Green Mountain Inc., Briggs Medical Service Co. and Healthcare, and French utility company Engie SA. More than 20 Particle-powered products have also been crowdfunded on Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

“We made more progress on our first day with Particle than we had in months without them,” said Michael Cunningham, CIO of Keurig, in a press release. The coffee company’s IoT project collects data from thousands of connected brewers used by its customers.

Particle Cloud provides infrastructure to connect physical devices to the Internet using a secure application program interface (API) along with a suite of software development tools and a management console that can be used for monitoring and updates.

Users of the enterprise cloud platform can also buy private cloud deployment options, service level agreements, enterprise support contracts, pre-built integrations with popular data management and analytics platforms, access controls and audit logs.

Particle said its partner ecosystem includes more than 50 professional services companies that can pitch in to help business customers. Pricing was not provided.

Photo by starmanseries via Flickr CC