by Exosite, on October 11, 2016
As a leading industrial IoT platform provider, we, at Exosite, believe that our expertise should be shared with everybody. Successful IoT implementation can be risky and stressful, so we try to alleviate as much pain as possible. This week in the Build or Buy series, we continue investigating the buying options in the IoT puzzle by looking at infrastructure providers –some names that you’ve probably heard of.
Infrastructure providers consist of big players like Amazon AWS, IBM SoftLayer, Microsoft Azure, and Google. You can think of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) providers as companies that provide individual puzzle pieces, each in their own box, that you must sort through and combine to ultimately create your solution. These IaaS/PaaS providers provide the bare minimum components you need to create a connected solution–networking, storage, computing power–so you won’t need to work around unnecessary features or attempt to fit your square peg into a round hole. And it’s all available at a seemingly economical price. While this is tempting, it’s also where critical hang-ups and delays can occur.
The costs and challenges with scaffolding a system based on raw IaaS/PaaS components are hidden within the human resources required to integrate the disparate pieces—not only in salary and benefits, but also in the time it takes to build a team that has the trust and direction needed to contribute in an efficient and timely manner. You’ll also likely need to leverage partners for other areas of the ecosystem, which adds another layer of relationship and integration management. Finally, one of the most important challenges is ensuring that the appropriate security measures are in place at each integration and within each service or application to keep your users, data, and brand integrity safe. Ultimately, there are no clear directions for your success when selecting this path.
To get an overview of the whole puzzle, click the button and download the full white paper, or contact us to start on your IoT ecosystem. If you’d like to get your hands on something now to start experimenting, try out Murano for free! 
