Development and Limitations of IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things has been developed for a long time, and so is the Internet of Things platform. The Internet of Things platform is the product of the great development of the Internet of Things. For the Internet of Things, it focuses on the generation, transmission and processing of data. It aims to complete A complete data processing cycle, including the data generation end, whether it is the data interaction between the acquisition device, single-chip microcomputer, SoC, etc., and the edge sensor, generates data.

For example, when a single-chip microcomputer collects the data of the current light sensor, then the data of the light sensor is the data obtained in the data parameter step; and then it is the most classic part of the Internet of Things, data transmission. With the development of the industry, basically all conceivable transmission methods have been used by people in the Internet of Things, including indoor short-distance transmission solutions: Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, wired transmission including Ethernet cables, etc.; outdoor short-distance transmission solutions include ZigBee, LoRa, etc., as well as outdoor long-distance transmission solutions, the most widely used 4G/NBIOT solution in the Internet of Things industry, etc.

These various transmission schemes ensure that no matter where and when the data is generated, we can have a way to transmit it, just need to consider the transmission cost. The Internet of Things platform that this article focuses on is the last link of the Internet of Things, data processing.

Why did the IoT platform emerge?

In fact, the emergence of the concept of the Internet of Things platform is an inevitable product of the times.

Because of the characteristics of the Internet of Things, how to deal with a large amount of edge data generated by a large number of edge devices. The concept of server has been around for a long time, but it was originally based on physical servers. For the Internet of Things, servers are absolutely indispensable, but the Internet of Things is very sensitive to equipment costs. For example, street lights on the roadside control the Internet of Things system. There are a large number of street lights. If physical servers are deployed, where are these servers placed? Who will maintain these servers? They are all problems, and they all require a certain cost.

Therefore, when the concept of cloud servers became popular, the Internet of Things was actually one of the first industries that wanted to taste this cake. At the same time, it benefits from the development of the edge device side, including the NB-IoT solution just released a few years ago, including the Cat1/4 solution related to the Internet of Things card launched by major operators, and so on.

The development of the wireless transmission solution clarifies our demand for the cloud IoT platform, because all the wiring except the power line is saved on the device side, and the unexpected cost of server damage and ordinary maintenance costs are saved on the server side.

Why are IoT platforms evolving?

As mentioned earlier, why we need cloud servers to undertake the data of these edge devices, but whether it can be more economical and more convenient is the root of the Internet of Things platform that can really become popular. In fact, fundamentally, every company produces and launches IoT devices, and they don’t want to go to other people’s platforms, because this will incur additional costs, and at the same time, there are some uncontrollable and inflexible links in this link.

But still the most fundamental sentence, the Internet of Things industry is too sensitive to costs, not every company has the ability to build a large-scale access platform with complete data processing logic, and it can even be said that the company that can do it is one in a hundred. , so when the commercial IoT platform was proposed, functions such as general-purpose device access and general-purpose device information processing were considered, and a platform was specially built to help other companies manage IoT devices and complete data processing. Collection and processing steps.

Why is the development of the Internet of Things platform limited?

I have already explained why servers will develop towards the cloud, and why the Internet of Things platform will emerge, but looking at the entire Internet of Things platform industry, it is actually quite bumpy.

As early as 10 years ago, the first batch of IoT platforms appeared, but these platforms have basically closed down. Enterprises trying this direction have continued, but most of them are hovering on the verge of failing to operate. In fact, it is because of two point:

The first is cost. A mature universal platform for the Internet of Things requires a large R&D team and a huge investment in R&D funds. Therefore, when enterprises subsequently want to earn certain profits in the business model of the platform, they will charge high management fees, which discourage the cost-conscious IoT industry.

The second is generalization. It is easy to say that it is universal, but it is a very long process of exploration to be truly compatible with the access of thousands of IoT devices. If it is not universal, it means that there will be great limitations. Alibaba Cloud's Internet of Things platform, including its Tmall business, is undoubtedly the best at present. According to Alibaba's public data, in 2019, the number of devices connected to and users of Alibaba Cloud's Internet of Things platform exceeded Huawei Cloud, Baidu Cloud, and ONE NET, the major IoT platforms, are at the forefront.

At the same time, it can also be seen that these platforms are backed by large Internet companies, which require a lot of funds and technology to make the platforms universal enough. pressure.

Looking back at the development of the Internet of Things, the cloud giants dominate the market, the platform is more modular, and the hosting is biased towards the cloud. Perhaps it is time to rethink the future development model of the Internet of Things platform and break the development bottleneck.