Why is IoT Platform important?
IoT solutions are getting inevitably more complex and dynamic. They involve larger ecosystems of devices and evolve much faster than traditional enterprise application software. With the proliferation of all types of remote interactions between devices and humans, IoT solutions are also spearheading a new paradigm for customer-oriented digital experience.
Their complexity may seem intimidating at first but, in fact, taking advantage of the IoT is feasible at a fraction of the usual effort and without reinventing the wheel. For this purpose, an IoT platform is the new wheel.
You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard.
There are some other important criteria that differentiate IoT platforms between each other, such as scalability, customizability, ease of use, code control, integration with 3rd party software, deployment options, and the data security level.
- Scalable (cloud native) – advanced IoT platforms ensure elastic scalability across any number of endpoints that the client may require. This capability is taken for granted for public cloud deployments but it should be specifically put to the test in case of an on-premises deployment, including the platform’s load balancing capabilities for maximized performance of the server cluster.
- Customizable – a crucial factor for the speed of delivery. It closely relates to flexibility of integration APIs, loose coupling of the platform’s components, and source code transparency. For small-scale, undemanding IoT solutions good APIs may be enough to fly, while feature-rich, rapidly evolving IoT ecosystems usually require developers to have a greater degree of control over the entire system, its source code, integration interfaces, deployment options, data schemas, connectivity and security mechanisms, etc.
- Secure – data security involves encryption, comprehensive identity management, and flexible deployment. End-to-end data flow encryption, including data at rest, device authentication, user access rights management, and private cloud infrastructure for sensitive data – this is the basics of how to avoid potentially compromising breaches in your IoT solution