What Terbine Solves
IoT, artificial intelligence and 5G are opening up enormous possibilities for new applications that will need to exchange data. In many cases, companies will want to sell the data, both raw and processed, that they are generating. The idea that companies and government agencies will form dozens, hundreds or thousands of separate data trading partnerships using the existing manual methods, is entirely non-scalable and unrealistic. Similar speed and scaling problems were faced in the early days of commodities trading, international funds transfer and commercial aviation. All were solved with the establishment of systems that all participants exchange their information through. Terbine was founded to provide such a system for the rapidly-building world of intelligent, connected devices and machines – and tackle the many obstacles and issues that must all be overcome in order to make next-generation applications possible.
How We Got Here
Before starting Terbine, the Founders looked at the myriad facets of the machine-generated data / IoT world, and saw that the “stack” was forming very rapidly. This includes devices, communications links and protocols, data platforms for IoT, analytics platforms, and services business building up around these. What wasn’t there yet, was the big system or systems, initially in the cloud and eventually spreading to the edge, that would manage all of this data. With that in mind, an intensive investigation called The Terbine Project was initiated, involving interactions with hundreds of Global 2000 companies, government agencies at all levels, universities and NGOs, resulting in a solid and comprehensive understanding of requirements.
From Research to Reality
What emerged from The Terbine Project was the understanding that an independent, large-scale and next-generation environment needed to be developed. And that it wouldn’t likely be done by the suppliers of the componentry, or the incumbent consumer-focused enterprise or e-commerce companies. The characteristics of what is required to make it start, grow and become part of the future fabric of global commerce, are too unique for the former constructs to apply without a nearly full restart. The theory was, if something new was created, then the incumbents could watch as it emerges, then partner with or even pursue an ownership stake. With all of this research being completed, Terbine the company was formed.