IBM and Cisco continue their love affair with big partnerships by partnering with each other

IBM and Cisco announced a new partnership that will combine IBM Watson's Internet of Things analysis cloud software with Cisco's new "fog computing."

The Internet of Things (IoT) is when sensors are installed in all kinds of objects to collect data on them.

Large companies are installing such sensors on equipment which helps them see how much the equipment is working and when it is about to fail.

The problem is, in remote areas, all that data being generated by sensors isn't being collected and analyzed.

That's what Cisco's fog computing is all about. It uses the network to grab and analyze data from remote locations.

Put them together: IBM's super smart Watson analytics service and Cisco's ability to grab and analyze sensor data even in far-flung locations, and you get the gist of this partnership.

Their first customer is Bell Canada, who is is partnering with this team to offer IoT services over its 4G network. In other words, a Canadian company that has lots of remote locations in the middle of nowhere can use Bell Canada's 4G network and IoT services to collect and analyze that data. And the service is powered by the IBM/Cisco partnership.

The CEOs of both of these companies have been going full-steam ahead with big, powerful joint product/sales partnerships in recently.

Under IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, IBM has launched groundbreaking partnerships with Apple, as well as with Twitter, Tencent, amd others.

Cisco also announced a huge partnership with Apple, as well as one one of its old big rivals Ericsson.

Here's a graphic that explains what this new IoT partnership is all about.