bChannels and IoT Evolution (Part 1)

What’s happening with IoT? How is the soup cooking?

I’ve been watching on the ‘Internet of Things’ over the last months (see our other posts on bChannels Insights). This topic is cropping up more frequently in client conversations. It’s on client’s radar so of course it’s on ours. I heard the term ‘primordial soup’ used to describe today’s IoT world recently. An old colleague, now working for a Data Integration vendor, used it to graphically describe the current state of IoT: a whole mix of things happening, with some pieces beginning to coalesce. As old life is evolving, new life is coming forward.

As an example, there are more technology vendors building parts of the soup that is IoT; connections are being made between vendors; and, technology platforms and marketplaces being created to enable IoT solutions. Announcements and early stage implementations are shaping the IoT ecosystems necessary to generate meaningful IoT solutions for customers. For example:

Connecting the hardware: Many companies are connecting hardware, device management, and some level of management systems together. Examples include small start-up device-management and connectivity companies like Technosec, through to large companies like Siemens or Honeywell. They each provide hardware and device management, connectivity, and perhaps a platform to ‘fit’ IoT on.

Niche verticals: IoT applications being delivered today are mostly in niche, highly vertical, areas including: smart cities, smart lighting, or health monitoring. Each with their own management systems for these industrial, building, and health sectors.

Data and ISVs: Applications generate large volumes of data which need to be mined and turned into insights. Business intelligence and data management are the largest ISV growth areas today, followed by the need to provision data services in the cloud to support these IoT solutions. Companies range in size and knowledge base. Small companies, like UReason, have a thorough knowledge about business intelligence for plant management and predictive maintenance. Large companies, like Talend, are connected to data plumbing for large software providers looking for another way for licences to be consumed.

IoT Platform: For IoT, and these companies to grow, they must connect with other vendors and ISVs to make their offerings more extensive and compelling to a customer. Hence the growing interest in IoT platforms to connect ‘hardware’ levels with ‘application levels’, and provide support and management functions to make sense of everything that’s happening in this IoT world. This is where large players like Microsoft/Azure, and Intel are coming forward with their platforms, and stand-alone platform players are growing out of the vertical niches we’ve mentioned above, like Thingworx and Cloudera.

Picking the right IoT platform will be important for IoT success. If these vendors can attract you, the right partners, and your customers to their platform, then they will have a consumption model that will consume their hardware, software, or cloud-based IT assets. Telit, for example, are big in IoT hardware and management, and are looking for partners to develop IoT solutions using Telit modules and their cloud platform.

Installers and Resellers: They are part of this picture too. In ’smart metering’, the installer is working contract for the gas board. In a more complex IoT ‘smart city’ they’re a sophisticated SI like Accenture, Wipro or IBM Global Services. Or telcos like AT&T offering partner platform tools to deliver IoT applications. Of course there are SLS and trusted advisers in the middle range as well. ISVs are also looking for installers and resellers to play a part as main routes to market.

Marketplaces: Customers don’t want to buy a bag of bits from lots of different shops. They want to go to a ‘mall’ and buy at least a kit of parts, if not a solution. Marketplaces are or will become the place to go for this. Examples are HPE now developing an IOT marketplace, Software-AG who just bought Cloudera and have a marketplace, or distributors like Tech Data also developing their marketplaces. Customers, and especially partners, will need to be able to navigate these marketplaces.

Evolving connections: In bChannels we’ve captured this evolution from soup to a ’rainbow’, which identifies the layers and starts to think where the technology vendors, and solutions are fitting. This is still a (very) raw model but it’s helped our understanding and we’re continuing to develop it: We’d welcome your feedback.

What we particularly see is that as IoT solutions become more pervasive there will be – there already are – opportunities presented for partnering with platform providers, networking with ISVs and downstream hardware providers, to build and implement IoT solutions. Making connections, building the right partner ecosystems, driving uptake and platform consumption will lead to IoT success.

And soup for all. Be sure to read part two of this article, here.

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