According to MachNation, the role of an IoT Application Enablement Platform (AEP) is to enable
and empower private and public sector organizations to build award-winning IoT solutions. IoT
platforms seek to achieve this by providing a secure, flexible and manageable software stack
that serves as the foundational framework for data, device and application management for an IoT solution. AEP is the communication hub, connecting and managing devices and processing
and sharing data with relevant processes and people. For more information, see our IoT
Application Platform ScoreCard: 2014.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing rapidly despite a lack of standards, or rather the presence
of too many of them. A standard, in this particular context, refers to a widely recognized and
adopted consensus on how various devices “talk” to each other. The communication can range
from data flowing from a sensor to a cloud application to a command directed at an actuator so
that it can perform a specific task.
While the lack of clear definitions creates some additional challenges in bringing an IoT solution
to market, it certainly hasn’t stopped vendors from building great products and services nor has
it stopped enterprises and governments from using IoT to bring efficiency, convenience and a
higher level of service to their end-users.
In this document, we discuss the three most common approaches AEP vendors use to support
IoT standards in their solutions and the benefits and drawbacks of each approach. MachNation
recommends that IoT AEP vendors choose a Hybrid approach to supporting standards in their
platforms, a recommendation we discuss in this research article in MachNation’s client area.