IoT Analytics used feedback from senior executives in organizations that procured and are deploying IoT solutions to rate the top-25 platforms. There is a slight bias to North America, which accounted for 40% of the mix. Europe (25%), APAC (25%) and MEA (10%) make up the rest of the survey.
For this post, I propose to focus on a summary chart. This maps leaders, challengers and follower IoT platforms across technology and customer-centricity dimensions. The chart highlights a predicament for mobile network operators and especially the large European operators.
Customer feedback for the large, European mobile network operators (MNOs) places DT, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone in and around the ‘Follower’ category. Ericsson’s DC Platform, which has an operator legacy from its Telenor origins, also falls in the ‘Follower’ category.
North American operators, AT&T and Verizon, fared better. These two appear close to the ‘Leaders’ category. For reference, the Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure IoT offerings placed best in the rating.
Here are a few impressions from this comparative chart:
- The Technology axis looks like a proxy for the IoT value stack that emphasizes network connectivity at the lowest level and application-enabling capabilities at the upper layers.
- The User Centricity axis appears to reflect the range of capabilities and tools that providers offer to users. Amazon and Microsoft can draw on an ecosystem of developers and solution partners and make it straightforward for users to gain access to these solution elements. This contrasts with the Follower MNOs. They position IoT as one of their Business or Enterprise Services offerings. Often, potential customers don’t have direct access to component offerings and must pass through a sales organization. This might result in a consultative sales process and be a necessity driven by the level of technical expertise in the user community.
- AT&T and Verizon fare much better in the rating. Both have a longer track record in the current phase of the M2M/IoT market, marked by the launch of Verizon’s Open Development Initiative in late-2007 and AT&T’s subsequent launch of its Emerging Devices organization. Verizon’s Thingspace offering has an appealing straightforwardness. Perhaps this is because it is not trying to solve all problems and limiting its focus to LTE-M and NB-IoT network capabilities. By contrast, it is more difficult to navigate AT&T’s offering with multiple web sites for its platform offering, a marketplace for IoT solution elements, design tools, solutions for time-series data and automotive sector specializations.
- North American providers monopolize the Leader category. Some caution is warranted due to the weighting of customers in IoT Analytics’ survey.
- Caution is also warranted in relation to the numbers of customers commenting on individual IoT platform providers. There is scope for skewed views if there are small numbers of users or respondents with narrow application requirements.
Customers are also interested in better integration strategies. That means looking beyond the boundary of standalone and silo IoT applications. In other words, how will IoT platform capabilities evolve over time and how might different platforms interwork as organizations tackle cross-silo applications? This line of reasoning calls for a strategic roadmap for homegrown IoT platforms.
Apart from platform-to-platform integration opportunities, a different integration challenge is to combine technologies. A case in point is IoT (connectivity-oriented) and AI (data and data-science oriented) capabilities. Should they be tightly coupled, or should AI be a bolt-on (over-the-top) technology?
Platform users depend on the innovation capacity of their platform provider’s technical teams and any third-party partner affiliates. These arrangements can build around a proprietary standard or follow a walled garden strategy. That may be effective for niche strategies. However, it is not on a par with open standard or open ecosystem approaches where there is a larger pool of experts to draw upon. This is another issue for ‘Follower’ and ‘Challenger’ platform providers who face a choice between niche strategies and the world of billions of connected devices that the mobile industry has been promoting for the last decade.
[1] IoT Analytics, 25 Best IoT Platforms 2019 - https://iot-analytics.com/the-25-best-iot-platforms-2019/
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ReplyDelete13 August 2019 update
ReplyDeletehttps://enterpriseiotinsights.com/20190813/channels/news/software-ag-seeks-iot-alliances
Interesting report from SoftwareAG and the role of its Cumulocity platform vis a vis other mobile network operators.
Software AG is also working with its various telco customers in an informal sharing community, to bring best practice and know-how to their IoT setups. Deutsche Telekom in Germany and Telstra in Australia have both stopped work with other IoT platform providers, including the large cloud providers, in recent months to continue exclusively with Software AG’s Cumulocity IoT platform, going from three-to-one and two-to-one respectively.
The company is working with “close to 20” mobile operators, taking the Cumulocity IoT platform as a white-label service. These include Deutsche Telekom in Germany, KPN in the Netherlands, A1 in Austria, Telstra in Australia, NTT in Japan, and Saudi Telecom in Saudi Arabia. It is still targeting a deal with AT&T in the US. It says it may look to organise its operator clients into a “loose club”, without the legal structure and governance that defines ADAMOS.
2 September 2019 update
ReplyDeleteGartner provides reviews for managed M2M service providers worldwide
https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/managed-m2m-services-worldwide/vendors
17 April 2024 update
ReplyDeleteEnterprise IoT platforms advance in spite of vendor dropouts
The enterprise IoT platform space showed signs of consolidation in 2023, due in part to decreased demand and profitability, with major players dropping out. However, existing vendors continue to enhance their products while other players are getting more recognition.
AWS IoT Core added self-managed client certificate signing for mobile device fleet provisioning. This allows customers to integrate with an external certificate authority, its own public key infrastructure, or services such as AWS Private CA, to sign certificate signing requests when provisioning device fleets. This provides flexibility to meet specific security requirements. In addition, AWS IoT FleetWise announced support for vehicle vision system data collection to collect metadata, object list and detection data, and images or videos from camera, lidar, radar and other vision sub-systems. This builds upon existing capabilities that enable customers to extract value and context from their data to build vehicles that are more connected and convenient.
Microsoft announced public preview of Azure IoT Operations, enabled by Azure Arc. Arc-enabled services help organisations onboard assets, capture insights, and take actions to scale digital transformation of physical operations. Azure IoT Operations provides a unified, enterprise-wide technology architecture and data plane that supports repeatable solution deployment and AI-enhanced decision making.
PTC reported FY 2023 annual recurring revenue of $1.9bn, up 26% YoY. It noted that IoT continued to thrive as the third highest bookings driver at the company. The retiring CEO further noted that in FY 2023 Microsoft named PTC its IoT and Manufacturing Partner of the Year; Nucleus Research and Quadrant´s SPARK Matrix named PTC the leader in IoT platforms; and LNS Research placed PTC in the leader position for Connected Frontline Worker. PTC further announced that integration of the ThingWorx IoT platform with other PTC products is gaining traction. ThingWorx Navigate supports Windchill on the PTC Atlas platform and PTC is beginning to integrate Windchill PLM, Windchill MPM, ThingWorx Navigate, and ThingWorx Connected Work Cell. PTC can now enable a continuous closed-loop digital thread from engineering to manufacturing.
Siemens Two years after its re-branding/transition of the MindSphere IIoT platform into Insights Hub, Siemens announced that Insights Hub is now a part of the Siemens Xcelerator platform, its open digital business platform featuring a curated portfolio of IoT-connected hardware and software, ecosystem of partners, and a marketplace. In addition, its combined IoT capabilities are now elements of Industrial Operations X, Siemens vision for the fusion of IT and OT, featuring a modular portfolio of IoT and edge solutions, low code platform, and manufacturing capabilities.
Software AG Cumulocity IoT platform was made available as-a-service for international customers in China through Tencent Cloud. Customers can connect and manage their devices in China as part of their device fleets, providing a single view of all assets globally. The offering includes local partners being able to publish the services and manage compliance to fulfil regulatory requirements. In addition, Software AG Cumulocity IoT’s latest release of its Cockpit dashboard enhanced the user experience and made it easier to develop and manage IoT solutions. An updated colour scheme was added, with usability and accessibility improvements for screen readers, keyboards, and user settings. Asset hierarchies defined in Digital Twin Manager and device smart groups can now also be analysed using Analytics Builder to perform aggregation analysis such as averaging humidity across devices.
https://www.verdict.co.uk/iot-vendors-drop-out/