What is an IoT Platform? And How does it work? l Bytebeam

One of the big advantages of jumping onto an IoT platform is that you piggyback on their growth. Top companies have hundreds of developers working on enhancements and new functionality. The gap you are experiencing might be covered in the next release, not to mention the new functionality, partners, and tools they’ll continue to provide throughout the years. IoT platform vendors have large teams of developers improving features, fixing bugs, and making sure their offering is rock solid. By leveraging their work, the quality and stability of your product will ride the wave of their investment. It’ll require you to work closely with various groups in your company, including Engineering, UX, Data Science, Finance, and more.

what is an IoT platform

These organizations take care of key components of the Internet of Things platform. Given that IoT is a fairly new technology, IoT platforms aren’t always as secure as the rest of your systems may be. This oversight is often exploited by hackers who are on the lookout for systems to breach.

Cloud Computing in K-12 Market Growth Statics, Top Companies, and Regional Revenue by 2031

These connections can be cellular networks, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or even low-power options like LoRaWAN. This data can include temperature readings, location information, energy consumption, and much more. As the number of devices in your deployment increases over time, the risk to revenue also increases. Controlling access to different facets of the IoT platform can help mitigate that risk. If everyone has administrative access, someone could make a mistake — and the financial impact of that mistake keeps getting bigger as the number of devices grows.

An effective platform enables you to rapidly connect and manage existing assets while creating and supporting new, differentiated services. It helps get your IoT projects off the ground quickly, and removes the technical complexity from IoT projects, enabling you to focus on real business outcomes. An IoT platform is critical to building an IoT ecosystem, it simplifies IoT, making it more secure, regardless of where you are on your IoT journey to build smart, connected products.

Microsoft Azure IoT Hub

This is essential for managing a large number of devices and ensuring that they are operating correctly. Consider platforms with advanced analytics capabilities to turn raw data into actionable insights. These platforms are free and open-source, which means that they can be customized and extended to meet the specific needs of businesses. Open source iot platform vendors platforms are a good choice for businesses that want to save money or that need a high level of flexibility and customization. Just like at the device level, the Principle of Least Privilege applies at the IoT platform level. The older model of granting comprehensive administrative access assumes you have a single person managing your fleet.

what is an IoT platform

Only when you approach product-market fit and start driving towards deployments at scale, is it time to invest in custom hardware. Examples of IoT connectivity platforms include Curiosity by Sprint, Jasper by Cisco, IoT Accelerator by Ericsson, and Pelion by ARM. Look for a platform that supports a wide range of devices, protocols, and communication methods. Ensure the platform can accommodate your growth needs as you add more devices and users. The collected data is transmitted to the IoT platform through wired or wireless connections.

Why use an IoT platform?

For example, IoT devices can be used to monitor energy usage and optimize consumption, reducing energy costs and improving sustainability. IoT device management is typically made easier with dedicated services that offer specific, purpose-built tools to ease up the three stages of IoT device management. It’s a given that IoT solutions are going to become more complex and dynamic as the industry evolves. They can connect large ecosystems of devices and can develop faster than a standard enterprise application software solution.

  • Explore IBM Maximo to learn how IoT data, analytics and AI can help streamline your asset operations.
  • For example, IoT sensors can be used to monitor equipment performance and detect or even resolve potential issues before they cause downtime, reducing maintenance costs and improving uptime.
  • You can use single-board computers with sensors such as Arduino or Raspberry Pi.
  • An IoT platform is a unique tool that will provide continuous monitoring of all your assets, be it vehicles, manufacturing equipment, livestock, or anything else.
  • If you are not familiar with the IoT space, it’s a good idea to get a third-party perspective from industry analysts like Gartner or IoT Analytics.
  • The choice will always depend on the specific requirements of your business.

Taking M2M to the next level, IoT is a sensor network of billions of smart devices that connect people, computer systems and other applications to collect and share data. With the open-source Azure IoT platform from Microsoft, you can quickly build scalable and secure edge-to-cloud solutions. Utilizing ready-to-use tools, templates and services, you can develop flexible applications according to your company’s needs.

What is the economic impact of IoT?

The platform must provide tools and frameworks for developers to build and deploy IoT applications. This makes it easy to create custom applications that meet the specific needs of businesses. The platform must be able to process and analyze data from IoT devices to derive valuable insights. This can help businesses to improve efficiency, optimize operations, and make better decisions. Opt for platforms with user-friendly interfaces and tools that simplify device management and application development.

what is an IoT platform

Many IoT products (mostly in the consumer space) rely on Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet. For these products, connectivity management might be included in their application enablement platform. Therefore, spending the extra time and effort to guarantee connectivity may not be worth the investment. This category of IoT platforms provides the core building blocks for your product, including consuming, transporting, storing, analyzing, and displaying data. As the name implies, their aim is to enable the rapid development of your application by abstracting the complexities of building an IoT solution. The internet of things, or IoT, is a network of interrelated devices that connect and exchange data with other IoT devices and the cloud.

Step Evaluate their ecosystem size and your programmatic access

It is a lightweight and modular approach that provides new or current devices with an easy, rapid way to connect to established systems. Thin edge is often used for applications that rely on low-powered, resource-constrained sensors. Enterprise IoT users need to update and communicate with devices efficiently in a controlled, secured and phased way.

Every device activation, change of data plan, and debug must go through them. In today’s world of IoT deployments at scale, that’s not practical — and it’s not safe to grant that level of access to your entire team. Many IoT platforms come equipped with easy-to-use data dashboards that are customizable based on which data you need to see. If you’re not feeding all your data directly into a third-party analytics software system — and even if you are — these dashboards can be very useful, giving you a quick overview of what’s going on with your deployment.

Myth #3: Investors will give my company a lower valuation

Some platforms are low code type IDEs, requiring minimal coding knowledge with simple drag and drop templates for common functions. As a rule, IoT cloud platforms are end-to-end solutions that combine capabilities such as app development, device management, connectivity management, data acquisition and storage, and data analysis and visualization. IoT is growing rapidly; the revenue from IoT solutions is expected to hit over USD 1 trillion by 2030. The applications of IoT range from smart cities, to agriculture and healthcare, to name a few.