7 IoT Platform Vendors to Watch Out For

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Choosing the right IoT vendor is challenging. Seven IoT platforms stand out as contenders for supporting smart city solutions and their associated Applications.

The IoT platform vendor market is highly competitive with many small and large players providing differentiated services. Just for an idea of how this market has grown over the five-year period, funding went from $1.2 billion in 2011 to nearly $3 billion in 2015, as per a report from CB Insights. While the competition is good since it gives choices and price advantages to the enterprises and businesses implementing or using these IoT platforms, the partner managers are challenged with decision making on which platform vendors to choose from.

A recent blog on IoT For All talked about 6 Decision-making criteria that will affect IoT platform vendor selection this year. It mentions six key decision-making criteria which any leadership team needs to mull over before selecting an IoT Platform vendor. The criteria are around the below 6 vectors.

When we look at the IoT platform vendor landscape, we must analyze which are the companies to watch out for in enterprise smart city solutions, which cover waste management, smart street lighting, energy and water metering and utility management. We can see that there are seven companies which are nimble and have a lot of relevance to the six decision-making criteria we see above.

Let’s talk about each of these seven companies and their strengths and alignments to the criteria mentioned above.

Altair provides the development platforms ‘Altaircore’ and customers can develop their own solutions on top of it. The platform has good data visualization and storage capabilities. Using Altaricore, users can have precise collaboration in analysis of data in real-time. Altairicore customers have appreciated the platform for its great usability, something critical to engage the end-users.

Enevo is a complete solution that automates the planning of waste collection and optimizes your routes. It uses patented wireless ultrasonic sensors to remotely measure the fill-level of waste containers. There’s a cloud service to forecast when bins become full and to optimize the collection routes and schedules. The drivers get guidance through the routes that get delivered to their cellular-enabled tablets. Enevo software can analyze waste patterns to reduce costs, better structure waste collections, track missed collections and increase recycling diversion rates.

Mprest has an off-the-shelf application which provides a great time to market and quality. It has good interoperability with existing toolsets and thus gives flexibility to the customer. The product is available on-prem as well as SaaS. Mprest is a complete platform that provides other smart city solutions apart from waste management. The Mprest solution has a vendor-agnostic architecture that enables integration with existing digital and smart city applications. It connects, integrates and leverages data from a myriad of sensors and systems.

Telensa is a global leader in smart street lighting solutions. It offers wireless smart city applications that help cities around the world save energy. The company provides cities and utility companies an open, low-cost platform to add multiple sensor applications. It’s a highly scalable platform with 300K+ lights supported at this point.

Gembo provides a smart city solution with great data analytics, visualization and monitoring. One can visualize statuses and KPIs at any level in the corporation. It helps city utility managers gain real-time insights into the overall effectiveness of their waste processing, power, water purifier plants, etc. It supports a large variety of utility equipment for instant time-to-big-data.

Sensus, a Xylem brand company, has an IoT smart city vertical with multiple solutions under it ranging from Advanced Metering Infrastructure, Automatic Meter Reading, Leak Management, Data Analytics, Lighting Control, etc. Sensus’s solutions collect data related to advanced metering infrastructure, automatic meter reading, billing, and consumption and assist customers on how to enhance their technologies and communication networks. The company serves a wide range of public service providers from utilities and cities to industrial complexes and campuses.

It’s generally a five-step process in vendor selection – budget allocation, business Applications definition, identification of vendors, evaluation against the decision-making criteria and then partnering with the vendor.

Based on the Applications and budget, the companies can choose whichever platform vendor gives them the flexibility to pivot, scalability and the best time to market.