Hi, everyone.  I’m Brad Cole, Enterprise Software Product Manager for Digi.  

If you’re looking for an IoT platform that can connect to networked devices and provide a hosted infrastructure to cost-effectively and securely manage and route data—this discussion is for you—Here's an inside look at the Top Five platform requirements you’ll want to consider.

Before getting to those—let’s talk about what functionality the platform should provide.  Just as cloud computing has established dominance for data distribution in areas such as e-commerce and business management, your Internet of Things platform should seamlessly connect remote sensors and devices with the platform itself…and then to end-user applications.

It should provide a central aggregation service to which all remote gateways and devices attach. 
And it should do so securely -- with automated detection and self-healing. Devices then utilize a secure integration protocol to send and retrieve data in a variety of ways. 

So what should you be looking for in an IoT platform?  What are the top five must-have requirements?

First and foremost, security is key.

In addition to knowing the platform is secure at a technical level, you also want to know the team operating the platform follows industry-standard security controls.  

For example, we follow security controls that are based upon widely proven industry standards. The controls are enforced with active monitoring tools and verified with policy compliance and certification audits.

Next, you want to make sure the IoT platform is reliable. The device connection mechanism must be rock-solid since there usually aren’t any humans at the other end to re-try if something goes wrong. The system must operate as if the devices were on another planet and no one can get to them.

The platform itself needs to be robust and offer you the opportunity to add more and more devices.  In other words, it needs to be scalable and have a device layer that handles connectivity to large numbers of devices and easily interacts with them.  

The expansion of registered devices should not require extensive infrastructure planning or lead-times.  It should be simple and efficient. In fact, you shouldn’t even need to think about it.

Now, what will you use that data for?  

Very often, you’ll want to interface with third party tools and applications that offer the type of data analytics you will need.  So the platform needs to talk to those tools seamlessly and reliably.  

On the application side, there needs to be an industry standard application interface for web developers.  This allows you to communicate all types of information securely while sending and receiving data to external applications.

Which brings up the subject of the user interface.  Simple and intuitive is always best.  Even at massive scale, administrators should be able to change device configuration settings, transfer files, upgrade firmware, and automate processes so it all happens on a schedule, or as network issues arise. In other words, you want to tell the platform what to do and when to do it.  So that way everything is taken care of for you. 

In summary, the Top 5 IoT Platform requirements you should consider are security, reliability, scaleability, flexibility, and last but not least simplicity.
Thanks for tuning in…we’ve got lots of other great videos like these at Digi.com/videos, so check them out when you can.