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Industrial IoT
Platforms

The IIoT platform market is crowded.

We drilled down into it to understand
which vendors have the best offerings
and what they bring to the table.
By Lisa Kosan
 IoT World
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Industrial IoT Platforms: The Top 10 List
Read up on the trends within the industrial IoT platforms space and find out which vendors should be on your shortlist.
T
here are many vendors in the industrial
IoT platform marketplace, offering
remarkably similar capabilities and
methods of deployment. And not one
of them has differentiated itself enough at this
point to be a clear leader in an emerging market.
Gartner’s June 2019 Magic Quadrant for
Industrial IoT Platforms
Industrial IoT Platforms, for example, has no
Leaders or Challengers. And its 2018 report, the
first Magic Quadrant to look specifically at IIoT
platforms, said there was no “dominant provider.”
With a high volume of platform options for
industrial businesses to consider, we set out to
identify a shortlist to make the task of choosing
an IIoT platform easier.
Given the fractured and crowded market, and
the growing potential of IIoT to extract value
from data, reduce costs, improve operations
and present new business models, analysts
recommend that businesses looking for a
platform devote time to research. They also
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suggest focusing on industry-specific use cases
and outcomes.
“We are seeing more of a vertical specialization
in all IoT platforms,” said Ian Hughes, senior
analyst for IoT at 451 Research. “But use cases
are driving the application layer.”
Prime use cases in manufacturing are production
monitoring and inventory management, he said.
In oil and gas, the use cases are supply chain
optimization and worker safety. And many IIoT
use cases relate to core overall operational
efficiency (OEE), equipment monitoring and
predictive maintenance because “any downtime
is extremely costly,” Hughes said.
Simply put, IIoT platforms create a vital, single
view of an operation. Their function is a “superset”
of an IoT platform in that it shares common core
functions, according to Hughes. “IIoT platforms
have to integrate with a wide range of legacy
manufacturing equipment and protocols, and
some of the equipment can be many decades
old or more but still core to operations.”
IIoT platforms also differ from legacy operational
technology (OT) in industrial environments. They
provide more cost-effective collection of higher
volumes of high-velocity, complex machine data
from networked IoT endpoints. IIoT platforms
integrate siloed data. They improve insights
through specialized data analysis and enable
actions, and they improve data visualization.
For industrial enterprises, “the unrealized
Industrial IoT Platforms
promise” of IIoT is to marry the strengths of OT
and IoT for “enhanced data acquisition, condition
monitoring and superior analytics,” according
to Gartner. “Together, these combined offers
will augment and eventually replace legacy
control systems.”
According to industry analysts, an IIoT platform
should provide:
Device management software that connects
thousands to hundreds of thousands of sensors,
industrial machines and digital systems. IIoT
solutions are usually designed to identify failures
and facilitate recovery from failure.
Integration through software development kits,
development tools and APIs to support business
processes and enterprise systems across the
business. There are significant challenges,
however, given the array of back-office
applications such as ERP, application performance
management, enterprise asset management,
computerized maintenance management systems
and more.
Data management to control and monitor
ingestion, storage, accessibility, flow and security.
Analytics of data from connected devices, the
enterprise and third parties to reveal patterns
and optimization of assets.
The enablement and management of applications
to simplify configuring and operating connected
assets and that enable digital twins.
Software to allow security audits and ensure
compliance, including measures to prevent data
loss and to detect and act on breaches.
Support for protocols relevant to the industrial

domain, such as OPC (Open Platform
Communications) Unified Architecture.
Engineering-level robustness to prevent downtown.

F lexibility with no-code interfaces, for

example, to allow a range of users to access
job-specific applications.
A combination of cloud computing, on-premises

deployment and edge computing.
Using compute and analytics at the edge
is quickly becoming the de facto approach to
managing data, according to Gartner, which
predicts that by 2022, there will be more IIoT
analytics performed at the edge than analytics
on “cold” data stores in the cloud.
An IIoT platform should also be able to
orchestrate functions such as machine learning,
using edge computing, as the volume of time-
series data in some forms of manufacturing is
too great to transfer to the cloud, Hughes said.
Also, the latency required to act upon the data
such as in safety or critical situations is too long
in the cloud.
Another challenge to full-cloud deployment
comes from the industrial organizations
themselves and the culture of engineers that
“places high trust in what they can touch and
control,” according to Gartner, which expects
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that 30% of industrial enterprises will have full,
on-premises deployments of IIoT platforms in
2023, up from 15% this year.
To help readers make a choice among IIoT
platforms amid rapidly evolving technology
and capabilities, we compiled a list of the top
products in this space. Our list focuses on a
company’s maturity, size, history of experience
with industrial software and the breadth of use
case scenarios. We also took into consideration
high rankings from analysts who specialize in
IIoT verticals.
Here’s the list of the top 10 products
in the IIoT platform space, which is
presented alphabetically:
Atos: Atos Codex IoT
Formerly a Siemens IT division that spun out
to become a separate company, Atos offers
its Codex platform for cloud and on-premises
deployment. Features such as the Codex
Connectivity Platform, Codex Cloud Industrial
Supervision — which Gartner calls “the edge
computing cornerstone for IIoT” — and the
Codex IoT Services Hub “play critical component
capability functions in IIoT architectures,” also
according to Gartner. While Atos is an established
IIoT partner for utility companies seeking new
opportunities (such as analytics in IoT), it plans to
leverage its partnership with Siemens (see below)
to address manufacturing and transportation.
Atos focuses mainly on Siemens solutions,
Industrial IoT Platforms
specifically integration with the MindSphere
IoT platform.
Gartner gave Codex IoT Suite high marks for
security applications, for which Atos uses a
combination of security technologies from other
parts of its business. The platform is offered only
as a managed service; all change management
is controlled by Atos.
Forrester said Atos “capitalizes on professional
services expertise and strong partnerships”
to the benefit of industrial customers. “Atos’
customized approach may not appeal to industrial
firms looking for out-of-the-box IIoT solutions.
Atos offers some blueprints, use cases and
incubation services to help jump-start customers’
IIoT initiatives but needs to develop a wider array
of industry-focused frameworks,” the analyst
firm said.
Forrester considered Atos a Strong Performer
among the top 15 IIoT platforms in 2018 (Forrester
Wave: Industrial IoT Software Platforms). It
was named a Niche Player in Gartner’s Magic
Quadrant for Industrial IoT Platforms in 2018
and 2019. The French company has 100,000
employees in 73 countries.
Hitachi: Lumada
The Lumada platform launched in May 2016
and is available on premises or in the cloud. With
the acquisition of REAN Cloud (October 2018),
Lumada can offer different types of IoT-enabled
cloud managed services, particularly to heavy
industrials, according to the company.
Gartner said Lumada provides the full range
of IIoT platform functionality, enhanced by
Hitachi technologies and analytics and data
management capabilities. The platform is
geared for sale to a range of industrial sectors
including energy and utilities, manufacturing,
transportation and natural resources and has a
“focused expertise” in visual quality monitoring.
The majority of deployments focus on improving
operations and predictive maintenance,
according to Gartner, but Hitachi lacks a “broad
and robust” IoT edge device management
capability and is still making improvements in
that area.
Forrester said Hitachi is an industrial
powerhouse in its home market of Japan, but
less visible elsewhere. The company’s digital twin
product, which it refers to as an “asset avatar,”
is a low-fidelity solution applicable for industrial
use cases including asset tracking and alerting
to video analytics. Lumada currently lacks a
comprehensive set of prepackaged applications
aimed at end users.
Hitachi was a Strong Performer among the
top 15 chosen by Forrester in its 2018 Forrester
Wave: Industrial IoT Software Platforms. It was
named a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant
for Industrial IoT Platforms in 2018 and 2019.
Hitachi Vantara unifies the operations of Pentaho,
Hitachi Data Systems and Hitachi Insight Group.
Based in Santa Clara, California, it employs more
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than 6,300 workers in more than 100 countries
and regions.
IBM: Watson IoT Platform
The Watson IoT platform, generally available
since 2014, is delivered as a collection of
managed cloud services with the IBM Cloud.
It can also be deployed on premises via private
cloud. Watson IoT provides customers with
“packaged functionality” from which they can
compose an IIoT solution, according to the
company.
IBM emphasizes the strength of its analytics
and AI capabilities as key differentiators for
Watson IoT, according to Gartner. Models for
advanced analytics can be trained and deployed
with Watson IoT to support monitoring and
predictive maintenance applications. In addition
to IBM’s capabilities in IoT across manufacturing
and utilities, Watson offers specific solutions
for connected services, manufacturing and
automotive, for example. Add-ons are available
for asset management, asset performance,
field service and facilities management. Watson
IoT is best-suited to organizations that want to
leverage IBM’s middleware, applications, Watson
stack and worldwide data centers, for connected
things and industrial supply chain components.
As a caution, Gartner cited the need for IBM to
increase the number of formal partnerships with
OT vendors to “broaden its value potential to
Industrial IoT Platforms
industrial enterprises.”
Forrester said IBM “builds on extensive
analytics with industry-specific and services
expertise.” Its capabilities include augmented
reality, cognitive data processing, blockchain,
edge analytics and natural language processing.
IBM was a Leader among the top 15 platforms
chosen by Forrester in its 2018 Forrester Wave:
Industrial IoT Software Platforms. It was named
a Niche Player in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant
for Industrial IoT Platforms in 2018 and 2019.
IBM’s Watson platform also won the 2019
award from IoT World for Best IIoT Solution.
The Armonk, New York, company has about
350,000 employees around the world.
Microsoft: Azure IoT
Forrester said Microsoft “has ambitions to
play a bigger role in the industrial IoT space.”
It offers a comprehensive set of development
tools as well as advanced analytics capabilities.
Microsoft continues to invest in end-to-end
security and in releasing an “increasingly broad
set of open source tools.” It tends to support
its own portfolio of products and should offer a
more comprehensive set of pre-built applications,
according to Forrester’s assessment.
Microsoft was a Leader among the top 15
platforms chosen by Forrester in its 2018
Forrester Wave: Industrial IoT Software
Platforms. The Azure IoT offering was excluded
from Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Industrial
IoT Platforms in 2018 and 2019 because it
didn’t meet the requirement for on-premises
deployment. The Redmond, Washington,
software giant, however, was cited as a Notable
vendor to consider.
Oracle: Oracle IoT Cloud, Oracle
IoT Applications
Oracle IoT Cloud Service, generally available
in December 2015, envisions IIoT as an “IoT-
enriched SaaS business application sale” rather
than a PaaS technology sale, according to the
company. The business applications focus is
on monitoring IoT assets, production, fleets
and services, and the connected worker. IIoT
solutions run only on Oracle Cloud but an on-
premises “rendition” via implementation on the
Oracle private cloud is available.
Gartner said Oracle’s IoT application-centric
approach offers faster implementation, ease of
management and out-of-the-box connectivity to
middleware and enterprise applications. Non-
Oracle applications can be implemented through
the separately billable Oracle Integration Cloud
Service.
Forrester said Oracle’s IIoT strategy
“centers on offering customers pre-integrated
applications” with a business focus. It cautioned
that the value proposition isn’t as strong for firms
not currently part of Oracle’s ecosystem.
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Oracle was a Strong Performer among the
top 15 platforms chosen by Forrester in its
2018 Forrester Wave: Industrial IoT Software
Platforms. It was named a Niche Player in
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT
Platforms in 2018 and 2019.
The Redwood Shores, California, software
provider has 137,000 employees.
PTC: ThingWorx
PTC’s ThingWorx IIoT platform was built
through the acquisitions of Axeda (cloud-
based software), ThingWorx (IoT and analytics),
ColdLight (big data and machine learning),
Kepware (for connectivity protocols) and Vuforia
(for augmented reality applications) and is
widely applicable across industrial settings,
according to PTC. The end-to-end platform is
available as an on-premises deployment and via
cloud and hybrid options. It can leverage existing
cloud and IIoT investments in Microsoft Azure
IoT Hub, AWS IoT and Rockwell Automation’s
FactoryTalk analytics.
Gartner said PTC’s strengths lie in its
experience with the manufacturing sector and
it tends to focus on asset monitoring, predictive
maintenance and operational excellence
solutions. Also, it has a global ecosystem of IIoT-
focused technology partners, solution providers
and system integrators. Gartner said PTC has
expanded its digital twin functions but offers
Industrial IoT Platforms
limited support for industrial environments with
complex or varied IoT-enabled assets.
Forrester said PTC “fuses device connectivity
strength with augmented reality vision.” The
company offers capabilities spanning design,
manufacturing, service and operations combined
in accessible end-user applications. It cautioned
that the user interface needs improvement and
the developer tool kit should expand.
PTC was a Leader among the top 15 platforms
chosen by Forrester in its 2018 Forrester Wave:
Industrial IoT Software Platforms. It was named a
Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Industrial
IoT Platforms in 2018 and 2019. The company is
based in Needham, Massachusetts, and employs
more than 6,000 people in 30 countries.
SAP: SAP Leonardo IoT
Unified under the Leonardo portfolio since
2016, SAP’s IoT capabilities address product-
and asset-centric companies, as well as
manufacturing, logistics, and asset and service
management. Able to run on multiple clouds and
on premises, Leonardo is available as a stand-
alone platform but, according to Gartner, offers
more benefit with SAP’s enterprise applications
for connected assets, for example. It includes
device management, in-stream analytics, artificial
intelligence, machine learning, data intelligence
and edge computing. The company has shifted
from selling IIoT as a platform to more of an end-
to-end solution around enterprise applications.
Gartner said Leonardo IoT offers proven
capabilities to “enrich and supplement” OT
functions with IoT for improved asset lifecycle
management strategies and processes. Digital
twins are a fundamental part of the SAP approach
to IIoT. But because the IIoT offerings are heavily
integrated with SAP’s services and applications,
Gartner said it has limited its appeal to industrial
enterprises without a sizable SAP installed base.
Leonardo’s software solutions and services
enable customers to leverage technologies such
as machine learning, blockchain, analytics and
big data as part of their digital transformation
initiatives, according to Forrester. Leonardo IoT
enhances the SAP Cloud Platform Internet of
Things, “by adding a wide range of pre-integrated
applications and solution accelerators spanning
a broad variety of industrial use cases.”
SAP was a Leader among the top 15 platforms
chosen by Forrester in its 2018 Forrester Wave:
Industrial IoT Software Platforms. It was named
a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for
Industrial IoT Platforms in 2018 but did not
appear in the 2019 Magic Quadrant because
it ended a reseller agreement for IoT Device
Management and no longer conformed to the
research firm’s criteria for inclusion. Based in
Germany, SAP employs nearly 98,000 people in
more than 140 countries.
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Schneider Electric: EcoStruxure
Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IoT offering,
available in early 2017 and built on top of Microsoft
Azure IoT Suite, includes a range of scalable
services and IIoT platform components that are
required for industrial enterprises, according to
the company. On-premises, edge and cloud
solutions based on the EcoStruxure IoT platform
are deployed across industries including oil and
gas, energy, food and beverage, and packaging.
The EcoStruxure portfolio for Plant & Machine
offers applications, analytics for predictive
maintenance, performance management and
connected services.
The EcoStruxure IoT platform focuses on
supporting power, IT, buildings, machines, plant
and grid environments, according to Forrester.
Schneider Electric most often uses EcoStruxure
to enable digitization of its own products and
services, an approach that results in a “richer and
more integrated stable of industrial equipment”
from the vendor, Forrester said, but customers
with an array of machines and vendors should
validate the platform’s ability to fully support
their environment.
Schneider was a Contender among the
top 15 platforms chosen by Forrester in its
2018 Forrester Wave: Industrial IoT Software
Platforms. The French company did not meet
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT
criterion for offering its platform as a stand-
Industrial IoT Platforms
alone, salable horizontal IIoT platform, but it
was included in the list of Notable vendors to
consider. It employees roughly 160,000 people
in 100 countries.
Siemens: MindSphere
MindSphere moved to the public cloud in
2018 as part of a “broader strategic evolution”
to ensure it can deliver a range of IIoT use
cases, the company said. It also sees a key
role for digital twin technology.
Forrester said the prebuilt applications for end
users are strong and that Siemens offers a range
of devices for deployment at the edge, including
the MindConnect Nano and Simatic IoT family.
These are capable devices, Forrester said, but
Siemens’ edge connectivity strategy “can look
more dependent on the vendor’s own hardware
than we see with others in this evaluation.”
Also, it said MindSphere offers a “relatively
weak set of KPIs, and device management
capabilities are also less robust than those of
others, with a new user interface coming later
this year.”
Siemens was a Strong Performer among the
top 15 platforms chosen by Forrester in its
2018 Forrester Wave: Industrial IoT Software
Platforms. Siemens also won the 2019 award
from IoT World for Achievements in IoT
Integration, based on ratings from independent
judges. It did not appear in Gartner’s 2019 Magic
Quadrant for Industrial IoT because it leverages
services from multiple cloud providers and other
partners in its offering. It was cited as a Notable
vendor in Gartner’s 2018 report but was excluded
from the Magic Quadrant for failing to meet
the criterion for on-premises deployment. The
Germany-based multinational employs nearly
380,000 people.
Software AG: Cumulocity IoT
Cumulocity, Software AG’s foundational
IIoT application suite platform, consists of
Cumulocity IoT Core and Cumulocity IoT Edge
and provides device management (including
device health and connectivity management)
and preconfigured IIoT applications. Optional
components can handle real-time analytics,
enterprise and cloud integration, and data and
API management. The platform can be deployed
in the cloud, on premises and at the edge.
Cumulocity can be used on its own or with
other products in Software AG’s Digital Business
Platform portfolio for improved analytics,
according to Gartner. Software AG maintains a
competitive set of partner organizations and the
sales, services and platform elements needed
to meet the IIoT needs of global corporations
in asset-intensive industries, Gartner said. The
Cumulocity platform provides the capability to
quickly create and use simple digital twins for
asset state visibility. As a caution, Gartner said
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Software AG lacks “meaningful partnerships”

with OT vendors and does not currently maintain
a large customer base of IIoT platform solutions
for core operations in manufacturing and utilities.
Forrester said Cumulocity IoT, which powers
Siemens’ MindSphere platform, strengthens
device management functionality. “It offers some
of the richest wireless connectivity, industry-
specific interface support, and edge connectivity
of the solutions we evaluated,” according to
Forrester. Still, the platform provides relatively
limited out-of-the-box support for business KPIs,
the firm added.
Software AG was a Strong Performer among

IoT World
the top 15 platforms chosen by Forrester in its
2018 Forrester Wave: Industrial IoT Software
Platforms. It was named a Niche Player in
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT
Platforms in 2018 and a Visionary in 2019.
Software AG is based in Germany and has 4,500
employees in 70 countries.

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Industrial IoT Platforms 8
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C3.ai Takes a Focused Approach to IoT Analytics
C
3.ai, an AI software startup, stands out
among the crowded field of industrial IoT
platform providers for its focus on analytics.
Though it failed to meet the criteria for inclusion
on our Top 10 list based on its size and market
reach, the company was one of the top 50
disruptors CNBC named in 2019 for its focus
on connected things.
C3.ai, which is based in Redwood City,
California, also stands apart for the more
inclusive way it leverages other companies’
cloud offerings, including AWS and Microsoft,
Industrial IoT Platforms
and implementing its analytics applications on
top, analysts said.
“The company is not locked into a particular
IoT platform and creates a model-driven data
abstraction layer across multiple systems,” said
Ian Hughes, senior analyst for Internet of Things
with 451 Research.
“This is then made available to data scientists,
programmers and business applications to have
analytics and AI-style processing applied across
multivendor platforms,” he said.
C3.ai is a so-called unicorn, valued at more
than $1 billion and having raised more than $243
million in the last few years, and it has a relatively
small staff of a few hundred employees, a fraction
of the size of its competitors.
C3 was founded in 2009 by CEO Thomas M.
Siebel, who sold his CRM application company
to Oracle for $5.85 billion in 2006. Siebel is
also the author of the newly released “Digital
Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of
Mass Extinction.”
Siebel added IoT to the C3 brand in 2016
and recently adjusted again to the current C3.ai
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moniker.
Hughes said renaming to C3.ai indicates the
company focus on understanding and dealing
with data across IoT systems. “It fits with the
maturing of the industry,” he said, “where
brokering the connection of things is only part
of the challenge.”
Hughes said elements of AI such as machine
learning are increasingly a differentiator to make
IoT impactful for any business process.
In June, C3.ai was named a Leader in the
IDC Marketscape: Worldwide Industrial IoT
Platforms in Energy 2019 Vendor Assessment.
“C3.ai software enables leading organizations
to rapidly design‚ develop‚ deploy and operate
enterprise-scale AI‚ predictive analytics and IoT
applications,” according to the IDC assessment.
“C3.ai’s growing list of customers includes 3M‚
Shell‚ Enel‚ New York Power Authority‚ the United
States Air Force‚ Con Edison and ENGIE.”
IDC said C3.ai “enables customers to build
models and deploy applications in less time
with limited risk. These tools have enabled
C3 customers to capture value from proof of
concepts quickly, with some customers reporting
value in under three months.”
In addition to the C3 AI Suite of software,
the company provides configurable‚ prebuilt AI
Industrial IoT Platforms
applications for solving a range of challenges‚ And though it has relatively few customers,
including predictive maintenance‚ fraud Forrester said, the deployments tend to be very
detection‚ sensor network health‚ supply chain large and with positive results. Still, some of
optimization‚ energy management‚ anti-money C3.ai’s existing customers wondered whether
laundering and customer engagement, according the “high-touch and high-value customer
to the company. engagements” will continue as C3 continues to
Also in June, C3.ai announced a joint venture grow rapidly.
with Baker Hughes, a large oil and gas service
company. IDC calls it a “significant win” for C3.ai
to “leverage Baker Hughes’ size and reach to
scale its business” and for Baker Hughes “to
leverage the new IoT/AI solutions it will build with
C3.ai to create market differentiation.”
Forrester named C3.ai a Leader in its roundup
of IIoT platforms for 2018. The company received
5 out of 5 for analytics and data (the only one
besides Microsoft in that category) and 5 out of
5 for security/identity and access management
(only Cisco and Microsoft shared the top mark).
C3.ai got a 5 for professional services strategy
IoT World
(along with Atos). But it got marks of 3 or under
for installed base, dedicated employee resources
and geographic customer distribution.
Forrester also noted the company has shifted
its focus “to prioritize on analytics to drive
tangible business outcomes” and has strong
Today
relationships with public cloud platforms and
device makers.
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