2020 Internet of Things Platform Research Report

I. Introduction

With the gradual expansion of the scale of the Internet of Things, the diversification of Internet of Things communication methods, and the increasingly rich Internet of Things applications, more and more enterprise users have begun to use the Internet of Things platform to improve the management efficiency of massive Internet of Things terminals and adapt to a variety of Communication connection, accelerating IoT business innovation. "IDC Global IoT Support Guide 2019H2" shows that China's horizontal IoT platform (industry common IoT platform) market will continue to grow rapidly in the next five years, with a compound annual growth rate of 40.0%.

Manufacturers have little difference in device management and connection management of the IoT platform; there are certain differences in application enablement (accelerating the user's IoT application development through the platform's AI, big data and other capabilities). Technology development and capability integration in areas such as location services and edge computing have their own characteristics; there are large differences in ecosystem construction, especially in the IoT application market, developer support, and partner empowerment.
The public cloud IoT platform will be the future development trend of the market. Compared with self-built IoT platforms (private cloud or IoT platforms deployed in traditional data centers), the use of public cloud IoT platforms not only significantly reduces construction and operating costs, but also can make full use of the ecological resources of public clouds to accelerate IoT business innovation .
IoT platform users pay more attention to the ecosystem of IoT platforms. On the premise that the functions of the IoT platform meet the needs, users pay more attention to the ecosystem of the platform, including hardware products pre-integrated with the platform (such as gateways, IoT terminals, communication modules, etc.), service capabilities of ecological partners, etc. Thereby accelerating the deployment of Internet of Things solutions and creating value through the Internet of Things as soon as possible.
More and more IoT users are beginning to accelerate business innovation with the help of IoT platform application enablement. By using the big data, AI and other technical capabilities provided by the IoT platform, users can significantly reduce the complexity of IT management, make better use of their own industry experience advantages, focus on the design and optimization of business processes, and accelerate IoT business innovation.
The IoT market is relatively fragmented: it is difficult for a single vendor to provide end-to-end solutions, and the full cooperation of ecological partners is essential. Users should choose an IoT platform with a prosperous ecosystem, and make full use of the software, hardware, and service resources of system integrators, value-added resellers, and OEM manufacturers of the IoT platform to accelerate the deployment of IoT solutions. In addition, IoT applications can only create value if they meet business needs: IoT applications need to be continuously optimized and adjusted with business development and business process changes. Therefore, IoT platforms need to have comprehensive developer support and the platform’s technical openness , especially whether there are open source projects on IoT terminals and IoT edge facilities, so that users can better optimize the technology from the bottom layer, adapt to specific business scenarios, and facilitate users to carry out secondary development.
China's IoT platform market has gradually shifted from platform capability competition to ecosystem competition. While the major IoT platforms continue to improve IoT platform capabilities and technical support services, they also strengthen cooperation with OEMs, system integrators, and independent developers. , expand the ecosystem, provide ecological partners with richer platform capabilities, a more complete development and testing environment, and more diversified marketing channels, empower ecological partners, and jointly promote the development of the Internet of Things in all walks of life, as shown below It is the industry map of the IOT field in 2020.

2. Existing IOT platform

IoT cloud platforms can be roughly divided into several types. The first type is platforms made by BAT companies and operators, such as Ali IoT/JD Smart Cloud/QQ IoT, China Mobile’s OneNET, etc. The second type is built by module manufacturers Companies that cut into the cloud platform, such as Gubei Electronics (Broadlink), Qingke, etc. The third category is purely objective third-party cloud platform companies, such as Yunzhiyi, Gizwits, Ablecloud, Ayla, Zhichengyun, Helium, graffiti etc. There are already many existing IOT platforms. Here we will focus on analyzing the more distinctive IOT cloud platforms for general scenarios: Amazon, QQ IoT, Alibaba Cloud, and Baidu Cloud.

2.1. AWS

Currently the world's largest IoT cloud platform with billions of devices in homes, factories, oil wells, hospitals, cars and thousands of other places. As devices proliferate, there is an increasing need for solutions that connect these devices and collect, store, and analyze device data. Broad and deep, multi-layered security, superior AI integration, proven at scale.

key function

1. Each device is assigned a unique id for easy management;
2. Uplink and downlink data flow between equipment and cloud platform, and complete authority management;
3. Rule engine, processing & distributing massive device messages to other aws services;
4. Support pub/sub mode, a device message can be distributed to multiple subscribers.

features

1. In addition to http, MQTT protocol is supported;
   MQTT will save bandwidth and power usage more;
2. The device mirrors shadows, shields the case of being offline for a period of time caused by unstable connections, maintains the historical version and the corresponding operation queue implementation.

Fees The
free tier (12 months) just signed up allows you to run a workload of 50 devices where each device can:
connect 24 hours a day
exchange 300 messages per day (messages not to exceed 5KB)
make 130 registry entries per day or Device shadow operations (registry or device shadow records do not exceed 1KB)
trigger 150 rules per day that invoke an operation (processed messages do not exceed 5KB)

2.3. Alibaba Cloud IoT Open Platform

On October 12, 2017, Alibaba Cloud announced the official release of the Link IoT platform at the 2017 Hangzhou • Yunqi Conference. The platform is strategically invested in the three major infrastructures of the Internet of Things Cloud Integrated Enablement Platform, the Internet of Things Market, and the ICA Global Standards Alliance to promote the smart networking in the three major areas of life, industry, and cities. In the next 5 years, we will continue to invest to achieve the goal of "serving 1 million developers, depositing 1 million IoT application solutions, linking 10 billion IoT devices, and leveraging the global IoT industry to achieve a trillion-dollar market size".

key function

1. Facilitate digital transformation: intelligentization, through cloud-end collaboration such as chips, OS, and AI, traditional equipment becomes intelligent;
2. Online, through communication technology and network capabilities to achieve online equipment; digital, through equipment online, to realize the digitalization of the physical world;
3. AliOS Things: A highly scalable IoT operating system for the IoT field under the AliOS family.

features

1. Systematic IoT platform, ranging from equipment to cloud to application;
2. App store, hardware store.

Billing scheme
Supports three billing methods: yearly and monthly subscription, pay-as-you-go, and usage-package.

• Yearly and monthly subscription, the monthly starting price is around 600 yuan
  

• Pay as you go

  • Message Communication Billing
    
  • Connection time billing
    
  • Firmware Upgrade Billing
    

• Resource Pack Billing

  • Message communication package
    16.56 yuan/10 million messages
  • Connection time package
    9.2 yuan/10 million minutes
  • Firmware upgrade times package
    192 yuan/1000 times

2.4. Baidu IoT Open Platform

Baidu Tiangong is a "one-stop, fully managed" intelligent IoT platform that integrates Baidu ABC (AI, Big Data, Cloud). Empower IoT application developers and ecological partners with key capabilities from "connection", "understanding" to "awakening", so as to easily build various intelligent IoT applications and promote industry changes.

key function

1. IoT basic suite: The development model centered on the shadow of things is committed to becoming a carrier for the cloud to describe the real world, providing basic functions such as device management, data access, and protocol analysis, and more conveniently connected to time-series databases, IoT visualization and other product services.
2. IoT data storage: The best choice for IoT time-series data storage, based on time-series data to achieve ultra-high-performance read and write and computing optimization, and can seamlessly collaborate with the end-side time-series database in real time. (launched their own: Time Series Database)
3. Hangu IoT Security System: Accumulate Baidu's latest achievements in the security field to fully protect your IoT devices. It includes device-oriented key and certificate management services, two-way authentication and transmission encryption between the device and the cloud, and real-time review and learning of the security status of your IoT devices to ensure that the devices follow security best practices.
4. IoT Edge Computing: Process real-time data locally.

features

1. Edge computing is characterized by deep learning capabilities, speech recognition, and image recognition processing.
2. The price is the lowest among all paid IoT platforms.
3. Data visualization services are abundant.

Billing Plan
Messaging Communication Fee

3. Summary

With the development of electronic information technology and communication 5G technology, the services of interconnection and intelligence of all things have gradually emerged. The extension of IoT technology can be seen everywhere from consumer industry to industry to service industry. As a cloud platform in the Internet field, they have also begun to provide various services to win over the market. Among them, Amazon Cloud, relying on the advantages of the world's largest cloud provider, has successfully resisted the banner of the Internet of Things and has good applications in various fields. The domestic cloud service platforms are not to be outdone. In terms of functions, they are actually similar, only the subdivided auxiliary functions are different, and the fees are relatively close to the people. If your own system has been deployed on a certain cloud service platform, you can use that first. If it is a private deployment, it is recommended to use Amazon Cloud.