What is an IoT platform?
An Internet of Things (IoT) platform is the support software that connects everything in an IoT system. Basically, in a single simple term, IoT platforms are a vital component of the IoT ecosystem, hardware, access points, and data networks to other parts of the value chain (which are generally the end-user applications). IoT platform acts as a middle-man between the data servers and user-facing mobile application.
IoT platforms are often referred to as middleware solutions. In general term, an IoT or Machine to Machine (M2M) solution is a mash-up of functions from multiple vendors, which includes.
- Sensors and Controllers
- A gateway device to aggregate and transmit data back and forth to the data network
- A communication network to send and receive data
- Software to analyze and translate data
- User application service
