The IoT (Internet of Things) market is experiencing a wave of consolidation that seems poised to ramp up even further as the year goes on.
Recent acquisitions of note include Cisco's $1.4 billion purchase of Jasper and Microsoft's acquisition of Solair. Both those deals and others tie into the "final mile" aspect of IoT, and this is where you can expect the acquisition action to continue, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland.
"The business value in IoT has always focused on introducing near real-time capabilities to two elements," Mulholland says. "The interactive optimisation of events through smart services to make competitive beneficial offers, and second the ability to support or empower this through ever improving new forms of data analytics."
That's why Microsoft, for example, has made such large investments in its Azure IoT Hub and broader IoT Suite, Mulholland adds.
"However, for all the big technology vendors, and indeed for their customers too, the challenge is the connection, management and meaningful operation of the so called ‘final mile’ containing new forms of physical networks and hundreds of thousands of sensors, and a selection of data formats," he says.
"This basic connectivity requirement has held back the expected rapid development of the IoT market resulting in the technology vendors being required to enter the final mile space in order to gain the basic data feeds to their powerful analytics," Mulholland adds. "Expect more moves from all technology vendors in the coming months, as their IoT product strategy starts to have to include a final mile capability."
Read more of Mulholland's in-depth coverage of the IoT space on his blog.
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