PaaS Platforms - The Swiss Army Knife of IoT or the Biggest Risk you can take?
The Internet of Things Platform as a Service (or IOT PaaS) market is an interesting one currently. People recognise that in order to be efficient at delivering IoT solutions they need a standard set of tools to be able to connect the various heterogeneous "Things" to a centralized system and then to analyse and respond to the data collected from those things. Often there are a set of intermediate databases in between the thing and the centralised system. So the IoT solution needs to support this distributed environment.
The entire market is really in it's infancy and very much in transition. Initial IoT solutions were proprietary and provided by the hardware vendor. More often than not they were custom coded. From a security perspective it was hard for a hacker or cyber terrorist to attack simply because they could not get access to the tools nor did they have the knowledge to use them. However from an IT perspective this is grossly inefficient as the resources to carry out IoT projects were limited and controlled by the vendors. So it makes sense to adopt a platform approach and consolidate on one set of standard tools. Standardization is the objective of any good CIO. The only problem is that using standardised tools means that the Hackers and Cyber Terrorists also now have the skills as well to get at your IoT systems.
We seem to be in a "half pregnant" time in the market. The cost of IoT solutions is coming down because of this standardization and because vendors are focusing on reusable PaaS solutions to sell to their customers. However there are so many solutions out there that the investment in each solution is diluted. That means that very few vendors can offer a complete solution and the investments in security and reliability for each solution is not where it needs to be. Say what you want about the classical IT space but for example when you only have three main vendors that sell Operating Systems for your laptop or tablet (i.e. Microsoft, Google and Apple) it means that these vendors can invest significantly to build out their tools and make them secure and reliable. You also know that they are not going to go away time soon. Where the market currently is at in terms of PaaS solutions there will definitely be a lot of consolidation in the next 10 years as some players purchase other players and some of the players will either exit the market (if they are big) or possibly go out of business (if they are small) or be bought. So there is a lot of risk at the moment on the CIO who decides to pick one specific PaaS solution to support his IoT needs.
Anyways here is one (by no means exhaustive) list of PaaS Vendors that currently provide IoT Platforms:
1) Microsoft - Microsoft tries to brand their IaaS Azure platform as it's IoT PaaS Platform
2) Amazon - Like Microsoft Amazon are trying to sell IaaS as PaaS
3) AT&T - Have a variety of solutions including M2X and Others
4) Axiros - Ranked a "Gartner Cool Vendor" in 2015
5) Bosch Software Innovations - a European based solution
6) Candi - primarily focused on building automation
7) Oracle - Like all the big vendors Oracle has seen the writing on the wall and is trying to get into IoT at the beginning of the curve.
8) Eurotech - Involved in IoT in a number of markets including Industrial and Medical
9) GE - Predix - GE were building a lot of IoT solutions for their varied and many customers. They decided a few years ago to standardise on one solution themselves and then to start selling it as a package. Focus is on industrial IoT.
10) LogMeln - founded in 2003 and based in Boston, Massachusetts, is a provider of software as a service and cloud-based remote connectivity services for collaboration, IT management and customer engagement. There solution is branded as https://www.xively.com/
11) Machine Shop - very North American centric. Also named a "Gartner Cool Vendor"
12) PTC - focus on industrial and manufacturing IoT
13) SAP - Again, a big vendor trying to ride the wave. That said don't underestimate SAP in this market. They have a dominant presence in terms of the ERP market (which will likely be a main integration point for any IoT solution) and their Hana solution in terms of big data is gaining steam. So any current enterprise using SAP would have their solutions on their short list when they investigate IoT
14) Solair - Has some good IoT success stories
15) HP - Another SI attempting to resell IP that they developed off the back of their projects
16) IBM - Again focuses on Industrial and Manufacturing IoT. There investments in Machine Learning pair well with their investments in Big Data and IoT
All I can say is good luck making a decision on which PaaS platform to choose. Just make sure you do your homework when you do your IoT PaaS vendor selection as I think it will be one of the bigger decisions an IT organization can make!
