ABB: The Consensus About the IIoT Platforms Is Wrong

“Right now, the IIoT platform market is a zero billion dollar market,” quips Sean Parham, corporate vice president of product management at ABB Ability. “I’ve heard others use that line. It’s not like I came up with it,” Parham said. But with some 450 industrial IoT platforms in the marketplace according to ABB’s reckoning, few appear to be profitable. “There’s a whole lot going on, but people aren’t making direct money off of direct platform sales,” Parham said. Still, a number of sizable firms — from large industrial conglomerates to scrappy startups, and a number of analysts have become so enamored by the concept of an IIoT platform, that they are missing the proverbial forest for the trees. “We do a lot of work with platforms but customers don’t buy platforms,” he added. “When was the last time you bought a database just for fun?”