To stay competitive, companies must innovate continuously and create greater value to boost sales and improve productivity. By setting up an IoT platform for connected objects, you can:
- Better monitor and maintain a fleet of connected objects
- Provide indicators to help with decision making
- Offer new services
IoT platforms make it possible to collect, store, analyze, and utilize data through the management of multiple connected objects and networks. Let’s take a closer look at a market poised to surpass $22 billion by 2023, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 39%.
What is an IoT platform?
An IoT platform provides all of the functionalities that speed up the development of applications for connected objects, while enabling scalability and compatibility among the equipment. It can also serve as middleware for connecting remote devices to user applications. Lastly, it supports interactions between the equipment and the application layers, often involving a web service to generate dashboards for viewing reports and performing operations.
Proprietary platforms vs. open-source platforms
Proprietary platforms are usually PaaS (Platform as a Service) solutions that are typically hosted in the cloud. The business model for this solution is also a recurring subscription to a service. This model offers the benefit of shared responsibilities because the provider is responsible for supplying the platform and keeping it up and running.
Open-source solutions are platforms that require relatively significant knowledge and resources. With this type of platform, the company is responsible for developing all of its services, in addition to maintaining the tools, infrastructure, and software. That said, you retain full control over the tool.
Three keys to an IoT platform’s performance
1. Agility
The selection of a platform should take into account both current and future plans, keeping in mind that plans may change over the course of testing and development.
A platform’s agility is defined both by its scalability through the addition of objects and services and its ability to address new needs and requirements that emerge during its use, involving the addition of new services.
2. Usability and the user experience (UX)
Usability and ease of adoption are two important points. Specifically, if a tool is poorly designed and/or unintuitive, users will not adopt it, the tool won’t be used, and the project will be a failure.
It is also important to consider the many environments where it will be used, like a laptop computer, a tablet, or a smartphone, for example. Your environment needs to be usable on these various devices.
3. Security
One of the biggest challenges for IoT platforms is the security with which data is acquired and stored. Questions to consider include:
- How can you guarantee that the data passed between your production tool and your platform is safe and secure from end to end?
- How can you be sure that access to potentially strategic information is 100% secure?
- How can you support actions performed in a remote environment, like the cloud?
About the Overkiz IoT platform
Designed for the energy and real estate sector, equipment manufacturers, and service providers, Overkiz hardware and software solutions makes it possible for companies of all types to enter the connected world with confidence.
An expert in IoT automation solutions for homes and buildings, Overkiz has made its cloud central to its PaaS platform, with the following features:
1. Openness and flexibility
Overkiz builds and provides an open, scalable, and flexible cloud platform suitable for any project. Its software architecture is fully customizable for any service, protocol, or equipment. Overkiz also adapts its solutions to the changing needs and the entire lifecycle of our customers’ products.
2. A vast ecosystem
Install, connect, manage, and maintain a wide range of equipment from multiple brands. Overkiz has already integrated more than 5,000 devices for smart homes and buildings, from a catalog of more than 200 international brands. You can choose from a extensive range of compatible devices for building your tailor-made connected solution.
3. Increased security
In terms of security, Overkiz provides end-to-end security with its platform through the total protection of its customers’ data, between connected devices and the cloud, applications, and services. All of these are fully hosted on dedicated hardware to ensure the highest level of latency and security. Each and every customer enjoys dedicated access to a unique configuration and full ownership of their data.
With proven expertise in creating an end-to-end IoT software infrastructure, Overkiz meets the challenge of handling the complexity of IoT connectivity.
IoT platforms in numbers
- 30 billion connected objects in 2020, according to Gartner
- $7.15 billion in 2021 revenues in the IoT platform market, according to MarketsandMarkets
- 30.6%: annual growth rate of IoT platforms in 2021, according to MarketsandMarkets
- $600 billion: value of the IoT software and services market in 2019
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