Microsoft Azure and AWS are clear leaders in ABI Research’s IoT device onboard and lifecycle management competitive rankings with Pelion and Telit among those ranked as mainstream.

The competitive assessment by global tech market advisory firm ABI Research provides an in-depth and unbiased examination of the services offered by ten IoT players, while at the same time delivers market insights based on certain chosen technological criteria including IoT onboarding and lifecycle management and ranks secure updates and FOTA (firmware-over-the-air), trusted device identity, intelligence and automation options.

These three criteria and their sub-elements were identified as the most vital for the evolution of IoT in a scalable and secure manner while also holding the reigns for the sustainable monetisation of IoT security in the evolving market landscape.

The companies evaluated and ranked were:

• Market leaders: Microsoft Azure and AWS
• Mainstream: Pelion, Intel, Telit, Device Authority, Thales and Digicert
• Followers: AVSystem and Sequitur Labs.

Microsoft Azure and AWS are leading the battle at the very core of IoT deployments and enjoying the lion’s share of cloud dominance. Securing the device identity supply chain is a strong focus for companies such as Intel, Device Authority and Pelion, and secure hardware module manufacturers such as Thales and Telit boast high levels of secure onboarding and lifecycle management.

“Understanding the intricacies of the market is key,” said Dimitrios Pavlakis, senior analyst at ABI Research. “Cloud device management alone is not enough to guarantee victory; the importance of critical partnerships is as relevant as ever to increase market reach and not be consumed by the competition. Intelligent solutions and automation are required for a sustainable lifecycle management environment, and even criteria like dev-tools and resource modularity can greatly add to the popularity of certain solutions and shape future IoT-borne revenue streams.”

Market evaluation for secure IoT management is challenging but necessary and IoT onboarding and lifecycle management are among those instances where secure FOTA, automation and trust device identity offerings can be the great equalisers.

A total of twelve criteria were chosen for the purposes of this analysis, identified by hardware, cloud, gateway and security service providers as the most critical for future IoT deployments and segmented across innovation and implementation clusters. These include encryption and hardware security, cloud and software options, breadth of dev tools and resources, IoT connectivity and ecosystem support, quality of strategic partnerships, regulatory policies, pricing and monetisation, on top of FOTA, automation and trusted ID. While each criterion hosts its own set of challenges for different IoT applications and various monetisation models, together they make up the brunt of the workload for next-generation IoT onboarding and lifecycle management.

Organisations must revisit their IoT security monetisation strategy and align with the constantly shifting device management pieces prior to going to market and dispel the notion that innovation alone can grant them victory, says the report.

“Innovation without a clear device-to-cloud roadmap, a flexible monetisation strategy and a solid partnership circle is utterly meaningless in most cases,” Pavlakis said.