Dr. Bilgehan Baykal

PTC General Manager

Forrester was the first research company who released a report on IoT Software Platform in November 2016 which was followed by IDC in July 2017 and finally by Gartner in May. In their studies IDC analyzed 12, Forrester and Gartner put 11 companies in the spotlight. We see that all three research companies included IBM, SAP and PTC, and at least two of the three research companies included Microsoft, Oracle, Ayla, AWS and GE Digital in their study.

Table 1: Vendors analyzed by Forrester, IDC and Gartner

Vendor

Forrester
November 2016)

IDC
(July 2017)

Gartner
(May 2018)

IBM

√

√

√

PTC

√

√

√

SAP

√

√

√

LogMeIn

√

√

Microsoft

√

√

Oracle

√

√

Ayla

√

√

AWS

√

√

GE Digital

√

√

Accenture

√

Altizon

√

ATOS

√

Bosch

√

Cisco

√

Exosite

√

Flutura

√

Fujitsu

√

Hitachi

√

HPE

√

QiO

√

Software AG

√

Zebra

√

IDC

According to IDC, a successful IOT solution consists of a combination of the following 6 capabilities:

• Connect to IoT endpoints

• Manage IoT endpoints/identities

• Ingest and process IoT data

• Visualize and analyze IoT data

• Build IoT applications

• Integrate IoT data into existing applications

IDC analysed  12 vendors which had a standalone commercial IoT platform offering in market by December 2016, which offered horizontally appropriate capabilities and sell into multiple vertical industries, which provided at least four of the five core IoT platform elements in their offering (Device connectivity capabilities were necessary for consideration.) and finally which  provided three customer references that ideally had been using the product for six months or more.

The success criteria for IDC were as the following:

1. Product functionality breadth: Connectivity management, device management, data ingestion, processing, management, visualization tools, application enablement tools, and analytics.

2. Protocol/device support:  Supported protocols, device types, and operating system types,

3. Integration capabilities: Integration capabilities with back-end systems and/or other cloud services, which could include databases, applications, and analytics programs, among others.

4. Edge Support,

5. Breadth of complementary portfolio offerings,

6. Delivery model options,

7. Pricing,

8. Ecosystem,

9. Customer service

Figure 1: IDC Marketscape IoT Platforms (Software Vendors)

Source: IDC, 2017

From these angles, IDC considers PTC as a leader among the IOT platforms as PTC offers one of the most powerful application development platforms with ThingWorx. While many companies offer only application development tools, ThingWorx provides developers with an important advantage in deploying their IoT projects by structuring their data which enables them to interact with different players in the ecosystem. Among the most important advantages is that PTC can offer ThingWorx with different service models and is not dependent on any cloud platform.

IDC also states that PTC’s computer-aided design and engineering experience and its enhanced capabilities in augmented reality domain are becoming increasingly demanded by industrial customers, especially for use ecases as digital twin.

Last but not the least, PTC’s continuing investment in the industrial IOT platform demonstrates its commitment in the IoT space.

Forrester

In its research, Forrester included 11 vendors which focuses on enabling industrial, commercial or enterprise class IoT devices;demonstrates a mature approach with dedicated organizational resources; provides a broad array of IoT software platform features and functions and shows evidence of market viability and finally which has interest from Forrester clients case studies.

Forrester analysed IoT platforms from 3 perspectives from vendors current offerings, strategy and market presence perspective.

In the offerings side, Forrester analysed connect functions, manage functions, and security/identity and access management. In the vendor strategy side, Forrester evaluated analyze functions, product strategy, professional services, partner strategy, market presence,installed base, geographic customer distribution and number of dedicated employee resources of the vendor.

Forrester analyzed the current offering and the strategy of the vendors from weak to strong and also adde d the market presence debth. According to this segmentation, there are 4 kind of players as challengers, contenders, strong performers and leaders as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Forrester Wave Report

Source: Forrester, 2017

According to Forrester analysis, PTC has made a significant investment since 2013. PTC holds a strong position among leaders based on its broad protocol support, connectivity strength, digital twin capabilities and a multitude of prepackaged applications as well its augmented reality capabilities.

Gartner

Gartner as well as Forrester included 11 vendors which qualified with the following 12 conditions which includes various criteria defining industries( Manufacturing and natural resources, transportation and utilities), architecture, functionality, independency, minimum requirements on number of customers, minimum endpoints, service models, Professional services, and vision.

Gartner research which was published in May 2018 examined IoT platforms in 2 perspectives as “Ability to Execute” and “Completeness of Vision.”

In the first domain, vendor’s Product or Service, overall viability of the vendor, vendor sales execution/pricing, vendor’s market responsiveness/record, marketing execution, customer experience and finally vendor operations were examined. In the second domain which is about the vision, vendor’s market understanding, its marketing strategy, sales strategy, offering (product) strategy, business model,vertical/,industry strategy, vendor’s innovation approach and its geographic strategy were analyzed.

Based on this segmentation, there are 4 sections in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant as Niche Players, Challengers, Visionaries and Leaders.

Figure 3: Gartner Magic Quadrant

Source: Gartner, February 2018

According to Gartner, PTC is in the Visionaries category with two other vendors. The strengths of PTC lies behind the facts that PTC’s offering portfolio which consists of PLM, CAD, SLM and ALM applications are well aligned with Thingworx to create synergy for connected products. Second, PTC supports more than 130 protocols with its Kepware platform. Third, PTC’s approach to training from both online and offline methods is supporting its success. Last but not the least, Thingworx Marketplance provides more than 170 apps and extensions which helps the development of its ecosystem.

Last but not the least, we understand that all three major research institutions consider PTC as a leader in IOT solutions due to its product/solution integrity, its connectivity capability and variety of protocols supported and integration capabilities. Also, PTC’s market understanding capability, go to market strategy and finally the ability to offer different service models to the market strengthens its position in its leadership in IoT domain with Thingworx platform.

Sources

• The Forrester Wave™: IoT Software Platforms, Q4 2016,The 11 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up, Michele Pelino and Andrew Hewitt ,November 15, 2016

• IDC MarketScape: Worldwide IoT Platforms (Software Vendors) 2017 Vendor Assessment, Stacy Crook Carrie MacGillivray, 2017

• Gartner Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT Platforms, Eric Goodness, Ted Friedman, Peter Havart-Simkin, Emil Berthelsen, Alfonso Velosa, Saniye Burcu Alaybeyi, Benoit J. Lheureux, 10 May 2018