C3 Inc., popularly known as C3 IoT, has partnered with Intel Corp. on a new hardware appliance for artificial intelligence workloads that’s chiefly aimed at on-premises data center jobs.

C3 IoT said today that its new appliance is a “full-stack turnkey system” that can be used to create and train deep learning and other kinds of machine learning models. The appliance is preinstalled with C3 IoT’s “internet of things” software platform, which can be used to build software applications infused with AI, machine learning, big data and predictive analytics capabilities. The appliance also comes with Microsoft Corp.’s Azure Stack software, which allows companies to spin up private clouds with all of the features of its Azure public cloud.

Intel’s involvement is under the hood, the appliance powered by its latest-generation Xeon microprocessors, with optional graphics processing unit accelerators also available, the companies said.

C3’s IoT platform was designed to run on public clouds such as Azure, so the appliance is basically extending its usefulness by allowing it to be run on on-premises infrastructure. That makes it useful for a large number of enterprises that can’t use cloud-based applications because of privacy, security and regulatory concerns. The appliance has also been optimized for applications that do not need elastic cloud compute, the companies said.

“IoT Solutions require not only cloud deployments  but also on-premises deployments,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst at Constellation Research Inc. “This partnership shows that there’s need for this, and Intel is the best and first partner for C3IoT to achieve this.”

However, Mueller noted the announcement was devoid of technical details about the platform, so it remains to be seen how well it will perform. “In an ideal world, the platform would be seamless between the cloud and Intel deployments, but we will have to wait and see from the first customers,” he said.

Even so, C3 IoT seems confident the hardware-software combo will be well-received, saying it expects interest from enterprises in the financial services, mining, oil and gas, healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace and defense industries, as well as the public sector.

The companies also said they’re planning to partner on joint marketing, sales, training and rapid prototyping initiatives as part of their collaboration. The appliance is available now.

Image: C3 IoT