Why are IoT platforms so darn confusing?

#Discussion(IoTStack) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

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Everyone talks about IoT platforms, but they don’t always agree on exactly what they’re talking about. This analysis helps make sense of it.

I actually think this 2016 description from Link Labs gets closer to the mark:
An Internet of Things (IoT) platform is the support software that connects edge hardware, access points, and data networks to other parts of the value chain (which are generally the end-user applications). IoT platforms typically handle ongoing management tasks and data visualization, which allow users to automate their environment. You can think of these platforms as the middleman between the data collected at the edge and the user-facing SaaS or mobile application.
That last line is key because to me, an IoT platform is little more than a fancy name for the middleware that connects everything together. i-Scoop focuses on that aspect: “An IoT platform is a form of middleware that sits between the layers of IoT devices and IoT gateways (and thus data) on one hand and applications, which it enables to build, on the other.”
Perhaps, though, IoT platform vendor KAA offers the most honest description. While acknowledging the middleware aspect, the vendor also allows that “an IoT platform can be wearing different hats depending on how you look at it.”

Hundreds of IoT platform vendors
In fact, back in 2017, IoT Analytics compared a whopping 450 IoT platforms. (That number was up from 260 in the firm’s 2015 analysis and 360 in 2016. But though leading products are growing at more than 50 percent a year, the market remains highly fractured.)

The bigger question, though, is exactly what is IoT Analytics talking about when it looks at IoT platforms?

The firm separates IoT platforms into five categories:

• IoT Application Enablement Platforms
• IoT Device Management Platforms
• IoT Cloud Storage Platforms (IaaS)
• IoT Analytics Platforms
• IoT Connectivity Backend (Platforms)

Read More..