Costa Coffee, the Coca-Cola-owned coffeehouse chain, is launching internet of things (IoT)-enabled vending machines around the world to change the way people buy their hot beverages.

The world’s second largest coffee shop company has teamed up with Eseye, a UK-based industrial IoT connectivity specialist, to equip its Costa Express coffee machines with real-time data collection and an end-to-end IoT service in order to better monitor the machines.

The coffee machines have been equipped with the Eseye AnyNet Secure multi-IMSI SIM, which connects to any available mobile network instantly, enabling the machines to communicate with backend systems when they are switched on. The SIM is also capable of providing health-monitoring, local time synchronisation, and data route information.

Costa will also make use of Eseye’s AnyNet Active Management service, which offers a multi-network Switching as a Service capability in order to ensure it delivers near 100 per cent connectivity uptime for the machines.

“Eseye’s fully redundant fault-tolerant network provides a managed connectivity service with a global footprint, whilst support for multiple cellular networks in each geographical region enables close to 100 per cent connectivity uptime,” said Paul Borrett, systems & data director at Costa. “This means that we can deploy connected devices and deliver premium quality drinks virtually anywhere in the world. A real advantage as the company is seeking to expand rapidly across international markets.”