It has been well documented that PTC recently spent a large sum (USD112m) on purchasing the IoT platform provider ThingWorx. The logic behind the acquisition is sound. The capabilities that ThingWorx offers will be incredibly valuable to a firm like PTC for whom integrating connectivity will become an essential part of how they do business in future. At Machina Research my colleague Emil Berthelsen published a Research Note on exactly this topic back in January (“ThingWorx develops a model to generate sustainable revenues with PTC”).
In the last few weeks I’ve spent some time speaking with Italian firm AboData about their Plat-One application platform. While the platform is a relatively new one (released in 2011) it is based on decades of managing complex M2M implementations. The company has lots of proof points in terms of deployments across a diverse range of industries including building automation, data centers and smart cities, and is working closely with a number of telcos. So it’s enterprise-grade and rigorously tested.
What particularly stands out for me is the platform’s ultimate suitability for the internet of things. It is built with scale in mind, for instance including a test environment that can run to multi-million devices. It also focuses on data management, in particular pulling together and integrating multiple data sources. Furthermore the platform tags all data as it is created, effectively encouraging the baking of security and privacy into the application. The platform also includes the ability to discriminate different grades of service. What it lacks today is the sexy mash-up tools and UI that helped ThingWorx to really stand out from the crowd.
An interesting one to watch.