AT&T and IBM are working together to deliver better data analytics to AT&T’s industrial Internet of Things (IoT) customers. The two companies have started a pilot program that melds together both firms' IoT products.

AT&T is bringing to the table its IoT portfolio that includes M2X, Flow Designer, and Control Center. These products help enterprise IoT customers manage their devices, as well as collect and store data. IBM, meanwhile, is providing its IBM Watson portfolio of products including IBM Cloud, IBM Machine Learning Service, and the IBM Watson Data Platform. IBM’s products can help detect anomalies and provide cognitive-powered decision making.

By melding the two IoT portfolios together, the companies believe they can create models that will help enterprises use existing data to improve their business processes and even predict machine failures.

For example, an oil and gas company that wants to detect anomalies in its wells could use AT&T’s IoT network, IBM Watson’s Data Platform, and AT&T’s IoT analytics product to cull together data from hundreds of oil wells and create a model that will predict potential failures or machine malfunctions. This will help the company detect problems faster and with more accuracy.

Although this program is still in the pilot phase, it isn’t the first time AT&T and IBM have worked together on IoT. Last July AT&T integrated Flow Designer and M2X with IBM Cloud giving developers the ability to deploy apps on IBM Cloud and have access to many IBM Watson cognitive APIs and IBM Bluemix services.

Data sharing and data analytics have been a big focus for AT&T lately. At the company’s annual developer event in January, AT&T unveiled a new data-sharing initiative that is intended to help organizations share data and collaborate on analytics.

Called Network 3.0, or Indigo, the proposed program is similar to Domain 2.0, AT&T’s network transformation project, in which the company plans to build off existing tools like its software-defined network (SDN) and its enhanced control orchestration and management platform (ECOMP) but is also looking for input from the industry.