Deutsche Telekom and Software AG, the somewhat unimaginatively named Germany-based software company, unveiled a strategic partnership to ramp up a “made in Germany” IoT platform to provision IoT services on a broader international scale in Europe and the U.S.

Through the partnership, Deutsche Telekom and its enterprise unit T-Systems aim to further develop their existing Cloud of Things platform, a cloud platform for IoT, by expanding their use of Software AG’s Cumulocity IoT platform. The partners clearly hope that they will be able to tap into this growing market on a more international scale by pooling their respective resources.

The German telco has in fact been working with Software AG for some time and first adopted a private edition of the Cumulocity IoT platform and associated services for the Cloud of Things product in 2015. It later rebranded and implemented it in a Deutsche Telekom data center to address enterprise customer needs for the IoT.

The Cloud of Things offering was also developed in close collaboration with Cumulocity, and Deutsche Telekom previously indicated that it aimed to further expand the IoT platform in collaboration with Software AG.

Now, T-Systems said it plans to use Cumulocity IoT as a new foundation for its Cloud of Things IoT platform. Deutsche Telekom and T-Systems say this will then enable them to serve a “much larger and more varied global market,” and note that the Cloud of Things will operate within a multi-cloud environment.

Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO of Software AG, said the aim is to enable enterprise customers to “simplify their IoT and integration needs with self-service analytics and gain insights to accelerate their businesses for the fully connected future.” Brahmawar said the two companies are expanding their partnership by “coming together on IoT and connectivity.”

In a video discussion with Brahmawar on the Deutsche Telekom web site, Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of T-Systems, said IoT has certainly been a big focus for the DT at least for the last three years. The intention now is to focus more on specific solutions that are more horizontal in nature, to enable companies to scale faster.

For example, Al-Saleh cited the example of facilities management company ISS, which has picked DT’s IoT platform to support its move into smart building management. Machine to machine is also another important area, starting with tracking cars for large German automotive manufacturers. He said T-Systems now manages 10 million cars across the globe, and he expects that figure to multiply over the next three years.

The strategy now is to build a horizontal IoT platform that comes pre-integrated with different elements to enable customers to “pick and choose” the containers and components that they really want to use, or be able to add them as required. “The idea is pre-integration, technology ready to go…and to be able to do it in weeks,” he said.

Al-Saleh added that T-Systems and Software AG are two German technology companies that are driving digitalization in their home market, and “this helps bring us closer together”.

“But what really brings us close together is Software AG’s ambition and desire to partner with partners like ourselves to enable our roadmap,” he said.

T-Systems plans to announce an integrated cloud IoT platform in the fourth quarter of this year that includes Software AG, and will be showcasing some new case studies “with very large implementations across the world that can demonstrate the value of the IoT and the partnership,” Al-Saleh said.