Smart Industry 1/2019

Size Matters: The Big Four
For enterprise IoT projects,
cloud-based IoT platforms
from the leading public cloud
providers are increasingly
central to new initiatives. Recent results
from the 451 Research survey
Voice of the Enterprise – Internet
of Things, Vendor Evaluations 2018
found that 59 percent of enterprise
respondents were using a commercial
IoT platform. Not surprisingly,
in terms of survey respondents reporting
a platform in use, Microsoft
Azure and IBM Cloud were neck and
neck with 35 percent and 34 percent
adoption respectively. Meanwhile,
Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services
(AWS) were similarly paired for
third and fourth ranking, with 27 percent
and 26 percent of respondents
using their IoT platform.
Indeed, 451 Research found that customers
seem to be deciding on hyperscale
IoT platform providers primarily
based on factors such as technical expertise,
long-term viability, and total
The Big Four
are starting to
differentiate by
adding more
AI and edge
capabilities.
Frank Antonysamy,
Cognizant
cost of ownership – but other factors
like strategic vision, partner networks,
or customer-service capabilities were
also influential.
“All of these platforms provide hyperscale
for enterprise-grade IoT solutions
and IoT/PaaS services,” says Frank
Antonysamy, global markets head for
connected products at consulting
firm Cognizant. He adds that all of
the so-called Big Four platform vendors
continue to enrich their core IoT
services but are gradually starting to
achieve differentiation through artificial
intelligence and edge capabilities.
Antonysamy explains that most of the
IoT offerings provided by the Big Four
are essentially platform as a service
(PaaS) solutions specific to data ingestion,
device management, streaming
analytics, and the data pipeline.
Small(er) may be beautiful
Let’s start with an analogy. According
to Olivier Frank, global
director for converged servers,
edge, and IoT systems at
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in
France, the smartphone has become
a pervasive tool in our private and
business lives for two key reasons:
first, the smartphone converged
previously separate functions like
music player, camera, computer, and
phone into one device; secondly, it’s
connected to an app platform that
provides countless opportunities to
benefit from these converged functions.
“The same thing is happening in the
Internet of Things,” Frank says. “[With
IoT], edge systems converge previously
separate operational technology
(OT) functions like data acquisition,
industrial networks, and control with
standard enterprise IT.” They, in turn,
are connected to a rich ecosystem of
IoT, analytics, and AI applications to
capitalize on the OT data generated
in factories, oil rigs, or energy grids,
he adds.
Frank, whose company offers its own
IoT platform, says these converged
edge systems, combined with a platform,
are ultimately crucial to achieve
the central goal of all industrial IoT initiatives
– namely “turning OT data at
the edge into intelligence and action
to increase efficiency and differentiation.”
Although the public cloud giants have
advantages, in the large and growing
universe of IoT platforms there is an
enormous variety of smaller, or niche,
players that provide offerings which
Edge systems
are converging
with operational
technology,
analytics, and
data that used
to be separate.
Oliver Frank, HP
are compelling for their competitive
pricing or particular capabilities.
Frank Antonysamy at Cognizant divides
these players into five main
categories. For starters, there is
21