From smart buildings to self-driving vehicles, IoT has vast potential to change the way we work and live. But if you want to harness IoT for your organization, you'll quickly find yourself troubleshooting dozens of devices and networks without a tool to make things simple.

IoT platforms can solve this, but how? And which ones do organizations need to serve different ends? This article will discuss the four types of IoT platforms and look at which ones could benefit your organization.

What is an IoT Platform?

An IoT platform is a platform, including software and hardware, used to manage internet-connected devices and the networks controlling them. It provides the infrastructure for connecting smart devices in a simple and secure way, as easy as any SaaS website you're used to using every day.

These platforms handle tasks like provisioning software, device management, secure data storage, and analytics. For a company that's just adopting IoT, it enables rapid deployment and iteration. And in a more mature IoT operation, these platforms save hours of work by making maintenance a one-click job.

IoT platforms help reduce those operations' energy consumption, improve safety and security, and enable real-time analytics. Data workflows spanning different departments can be built on a user-friendly interface, so there's no need for in-house developer talent. What's more, once your services are in customers' hands, an IoT platform can provide detailed insights into user behavior, enabling more targeted marketing and product development.

It's the same story as the rest of the cloud computing market: compared to an "analog" call centre provider, cloud contact centre providers offer convenience, efficiency, and data insights that are easy to do once those operations go digital.

The 4 Types of IoT Platforms

Not all IoT platforms are alike. Depending on where you are as a business, you might need to use one or all of them to get the results you desire. Let's go over the four types of IoT platforms and what they can do for you.

1. IoT Connectivity Platforms

An IoT Connectivity Platform is used to manage and monitor the communication protocols that connect devices across WiFi, bluetooth, and mobile internet. These platforms provide a user-friendly interface for the provisioning and management of devices across whichever networks you need to use in the moment.

Running connected devices on a platform like this helps organizations reduce operating costs by making their networks more efficient and more stable. This reduces the cost of deploying these systems into new locations and maintaining them over time.

2. IoT Device Management Platforms

IoT Device Management Platforms provide tools for large organizations to monitor, troubleshoot, and update connected devices remotely. These platforms can handle the secure provisioning, configuration, and tracking of thousands of connected devices in real-time.

Device management platforms also provide support for over-the-air software updates. These platforms allow organizations to keep their devices up-to-date, secure, and compliant with industry standards without the need for IT staff to spend hours upgrading every system on-site.

3. IoT Application Enablement Platforms

IoT Application Enablement Platforms create and deploy applications that leverage IoT data, whether they're smart home devices or industrial control systems.

They also allow organizations to quickly develop scalable, secure, and feature-rich applications that are ready to be integrated with a wide range of IoT platforms, such as HomeKit or Google Cloud Platform, and gather the usage data they need to improve their operation.

4. IoT Analytics Platforms

IoT Analytics Platforms help organizations gain insight into the data generated by their connected devices.

Similar to something like Google Analytics, these platforms make it easy to perform in-depth analysis of the data gathered from connected devices, helping organizations to unlock the full potential of the IoT data.

With so much data coming from different devices and customers running different software versions, data might need a lot of complex formatting to fit on one unified database.

How to Choose the IoT Platform for Your Organization

When choosing an IoT platform vendor for your organization, it's important to consider which stage of development and execution your company is at.

If your organization is in the early stages of development, be on the lookout for platforms that offer "lego-like" components and workflows that can help you quickly build and iterate on new systems. Once you're scaling up, you need to focus on systems which make provisioning and maintaining those systems as automatic and reliable as possible.

It's equally important to find providers that understand your industry. The needs of a healthcare provider might look simple on paper, but they'll quickly have to navigate sector-specific requirements around data storage and be able to reassure patients that data is being transmitted securely. The IoT network in that sector will be shaped by regulation and risk assessments as much as technological needs.

The Right IoT Platform for you

The right IoT platform for you really depends on your industry. Many startups can use off-the-shelf hardware and just focus on the analytics they need to build a great customer experience. But a logistics-heavy organization is likely going to have complex hardware needs that a device management platform can simplify at scale.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick Brown - accelerate agency 

Nick Brown is the founder & CEO of accelerate, a SaaS SEO agency. Nick has launched several successful online businesses, writes for Forbes, published a book and has grown accelerate from a UK based agency to a company that now operates across US, APAC and EMEA.