Gallery: 10 Questions to Ask When Selecting an IIoT Platform

It can be hard to wrap your head around the IIoT platform market, but after answering these questions, you should have a clearer sense of priorities when shopping for such software.

Brian Buntz

September 13, 2019

10 Slides
Image shows the inside of a smart factory
Getty images

In prominent platform markets in the past, cloud computing and connectivity serve as the foundation for co-creation. The platform helps solve a central problem while developers build on the platform to meet custom market demands. Smartphone ecosystems, for instance, are an example of this, where Google’s Android ecosystem and Apple’s App Store both inspired a symbiosis of internationally-based developers, consumers and entrepreneurs. In 2018, the App Store generated $22.6 billion in international app revenue while the Android-focused Google Play store generated $11.8 billion. Companies ranging from Amazon to Google to Facebook to Salesforce have all created platforms that support larger ecosystems. 

While the IoT platform market has yet to replicate the success of those prominent examples, executives who are mulling using an IoT platform or multiple platforms should strive to select a platform that not just simplifies commodity-based “plumbing” tasks, but can support an ecosystem of innovation that helps your firm make tangible improvements in how it manages industrial assets and operations. Here, we propose a series of questions designed to do just that.

About the Author

Brian Buntz

Brian is a veteran journalist with more than ten years’ experience covering an array of technologies including the Internet of Things, 3-D printing, and cybersecurity. Before coming to Penton and later Informa, he served as the editor-in-chief of UBM’s Qmed where he overhauled the brand’s news coverage and helped to grow the site’s traffic volume dramatically. He had previously held managing editor roles on the company’s medical device technology publications including European Medical Device Technology (EMDT) and Medical Device & Diagnostics Industry (MD+DI), and had served as editor-in-chief of Medical Product Manufacturing News (MPMN).

At UBM, Brian also worked closely with the company’s events group on speaker selection and direction and played an important role in cementing famed futurist Ray Kurzweil as a keynote speaker at the 2016 Medical Design & Manufacturing West event in Anaheim. An article of his was also prominently on kurzweilai.net, a website dedicated to Kurzweil’s ideas.

Multilingual, Brian has an M.A. degree in German from the University of Oklahoma.

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