News that Fujitsu is offering
a cloud platform for customers to exploit the internet of things (IoT) highlights
the fact that it’s still a mind boggling concept for a lot of companies – and
that savvy suppliers are going to have to help their clients wrap their heads
around what they can do.
A key element of this is Fujitsu’s statement
that it’s building a “global ecosystem” with business partners. It’s not just
the cloud platform, but tying it in with sensors, devices, networks, middleware
and applications as part of the deal. It makes sense to offer customers a
package that saves them a lot of agonising over whether all the parts will work
effectively together.
Throw in an analytics service for those small to midsized
firms that don’t know how to exploit all the IoT data and there’s a solid
business proposition, especially if the economies of scale make it more
competitive. This has promise as an approach for major suppliers to carve out
their shares in the market, so far largely untapped, that brings together big
data and the IoT.
The main hurdle is likely to be in whether customers have
their own ideas about which sensors, devices and other parts of the package
they prefer to use. If they have suppliers who are already proving their worth
they are going to think twice about dumping them, and making a new investment,
to buy right into the big players’ ecosystems.
This could be an interesting feature of the IT business over
the next few years: whether customers turn away from cloud platforms because
they are incompatible with their choice of hardware and networks, and whether
the major firms with the capacity to create packages can make them sufficiently
flexible.
But the fact that the IoT is virgin territory to a lot of
companies places big suppliers, especially those with a record in systems
integration, in a position where they can lead the way by making it easier for
customers. It’s one case where the demand is likely to respond to the supply.
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