MachNation provides enterprise IoT ecosystem tips for wading through evolving market
As evident from the recent CES 2016 event, the “Internet of Things” is a booming industry directly linked to the mobile telecommunications markets ability to enable connectivity to what many are predicting will be billions of new devices.
One segment of the IoT ecosystem witnessing significant opportunity is the application enablement platforms market that targets enterprises looking to take advantage of increased connectivity. According to a recent report from MachNation, AEPs are “technology-centric middleware platforms focused on connecting any device to any application with limited or no regard to the target segment (or industry sector) addressed by the technology.”
The MachNation report found a number of new ventures are finding traction in the space, though some established players are also beginning to look at market opportunities.
“PTC acquired IoT stalwarts ThingWorx and Axeda, but smaller more nimble firms and some powerhouses have had the second-mover advantage, and now PTC is playing catch-up,” the MachNation report noted. “We’ve seen startups like Cumulocity, Davra Networks and SeeControl take different but effective approaches to the market with solutions that accelerate development and deployment of IoT solutions. Industry veterans like IBM have also joined the field with its IoT Foundation solution by leveraging its expertise in data, cloud and analytics to grow customers and partners.”
Somewhat clouding the market are platform-enabled solutions, which MachNation explained are solution-centric offerings built to provide target customers a “fully-enabled, referenceable IoT solution quickly … using a flexible product-plus-services development model.” This is said to allow a PES to rely on its “own application development; exposure of specific APIs; a relevant developer community; a direct sales model; and a core set of SIs to create validated, rapid and secure industry- or application-centric IoT solutions for customers.”
“Some enterprises prefer to engage with AEPs because they are creating horizontal solutions and plan to do development around them,” MachNation noted. “Other enterprises want to work with a PES vendor and get a solution tested and deployed quickly.”
In looking to help enterprises figure out their IoT plans, MachNation noted a handful of tips when researching AEPs. Those included:
1. IoT platforms that provide a flexible deployment model including a true multi-tenant cloud. Many public and private sector organizations are not technology companies and therefore benefit from technology solutions that are easy to deploy and scale.
2. A top IoT application enablement vendor’s technology should be built with the application developer in mind. The AEP’s technology must provide a flexible and robust model for building a solution that addresses the requirements from the customer.
3. The best IoT AEP vendors will have a well-developed network of system integrator and other technology partners. Due to complexity and lack of expertise of IoT deployment, public and private sector organizations rely on this partnership network to efficiently implement IoT solutions using best practices from other deployments.
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