Google the White Knight of Xively

[ Editor See also Xively ]

In spite the Internet of Things term was coined by Kevin Ashton executive director of the Auto-ID Center as the title of a presentation he made at Procter & Gamble (P&G) in 1999, it was only when companies like Pachube (an early leader in the burgeoning “Internet of things” field) launched a web service  that enabled to store, share & discover real time sensor, energy and environment data from objects & devices around the world, when most of us believed that the time to IoT was finally had arrived.

Pachube, an IoT pioneer

Since its founding in 2008, Pachube pretended to be the leading open development platform for the Internet of Things. The business model at that point was predicated on the following theory: “if you want a free service, then data will be open; but if you want privacy, that’s what you will pay for”.

In 2011 when the company was acquired by Woburn, Massachusetts-based LogMeIn(NASDAQ: LOGM) in a deal that was worth “approximately $15 million in cash, Pachube was my favorite startup in the fast emerging Internet of Things market. LogMeIn, best known for its cloud-based remote access software, re-branded the service as Cosm, but it was still a “beta” test version, to finally launch Xively that become a division of LogMeIn.  

We all know that the IoT Platform market need a quick consolidation

The M2M/IOT Platform market has changed in the last 10 years. The fragmentation is unsustainable and I can say that I do not see a clear IoT platform market leader yet that works as a plug-and-play fix for all kind of connected-device creators. Besides, the rush of investors for IoT platform companies trigger rumors of new acquisitions increasing significantly their actual valuation and encourages thousands of entrepreneurs and startups to create new IoT platform copies of each other. Although there is still room for new innovative IoT platform startups, the decision to trust in a company able to simplify the complexities of the IoT, with a scalable and robust infrastructure and drive real results for your business, will reduce the choice among a short list. The bad news is that the hundreds of IoT platforms startups must compete now with the platforms offered by Tech and Industrial Giant vendors.

Given the confusion that exists about the IoT platforms, companies need to approach experts’ advisors that will recommend which platform(s) is most suitable for your current and future business and technical requirements.

Xively has had its particular desert crossing with LogMeIn

If Pachube was one of ReadWriteWeb’s top Internet of Things companies of 2009 and 2010, Xively continued to reap accolades and IoT awards since then. However, when I published the post about the several faces of Iot Awards, Xively was in my list of disappointing losers in 2014. My reasons was based on the changes in the Management Team, the few announcements of new customers and my own research. It looks like the company had lost its charm and other startups were occupying its place.

But during the MWC15 I spoke with Mario Finocchiaro, Director of Business Development and Paddy Srinivasan, Vice President & Head of Products. I must say that infected me their enthusiasm, passion and vision of the new Xively built on LogMeIn’s cloud platform Gravity. Maybe it was a mirage. LogMeIn did not want or did not know how to incorporate the potential of Xively into its business. And in 2017 again Xively lost its charm.

Google the White Knight

On February 15, we wake up with the new that Google will acquire IoT platform Xivelyfrom LogMeIn for $50 million, according to Bloomberg, to expand in market for connected devices. Google has been the White Knight of Xively.

Google came in late in IoT platform market. Its primary competitors AWS, Microsoft and IBM did the homework before with acquisition of 2lemetry (AWS) or Solair (Microsoft).

Xively will allow Google to compete. The announcement that, Injong Rhee, a top Samsung Electronics Co. executive, moved to Google to work on Internet-of-Things services for its cloud business will also reinforce the positioning and value proposition of Google Cloud Platform.

It will not be long before we see a new name change for Xively. It doesn´t matter too much for its 45 employees.  Through this acquisition, Cloud IoT Core will gain deep IoT technology and engineering expertise, including Xively’s advanced device management, messaging, and dashboard capabilities,” Antony Passemard, head of product management for IoT and Pub/Sub at Google Cloud, wrote in a blog post.

There will not be White Knights for everyone

In “Be careful of the Walking Dead of IoT, I alerted that in spite that no one has the crystal ball, it is almost sure that many IoT platforms are not going to continue within 10 years, not even within 1, 2 or 3 years in this inflated market. As show in the picture below, some Tech Giants have been looking and found some of the best pieces. What will happen to the 700+ platforms out there? There will not be White Knights for everyone. At least for Xively it has been a happy end.

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