The rapid growth of the Internet of Things over recent years has brought countless examples of smart devices, cloud services, and applications to life. As their complexity increases, the need for IoT platforms ̶ solution frameworks that streamline IoT application development ̶ also grows. In their recent report, MarketsandMarkets estimated that the global IoT cloud platform market will grow from USD 6.4 billion in 2020 to USD 11.5 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.6% during the forecast period.
The number of IoT platform vendors shows similar dynamics; as estimated by Statista, there were about 620 publicly known IoT platforms in 2019, twice as many as in 2015. Big companies from different industries, such as Amazon, Bosch, and Deutsche Telekom, have joined the fray, all trying to increase their footprint in technology markets. However, a bigger vendor doesn’t always mean a better solution. When choosing the best IoT platform for your business, it is important to consider the total cost of ownership, usability, speed of implementation, etc. as much as strong feature sets. What is considered to be a great IoT platform, in general, may not be the best option for your case.