Buy or Develop Your IIoT Platform – The Essential Guide

You're facing an important decision: You need an IIoT platform, but should you buy an out-of-the-box solution or develop your own from scratch? Maybe there’s even a third option? In this guide, we’ll help you figure out the best approach based on your specific business needs.

In this article

We'll guide you through the main concerns, and you'll discover:

• The critical questions to consider,
• Pros and cons of in-house development,
• Positives and negatives of buying, and
• An approach that takes the best of both worlds.

The Important Questions

There are several key questions to answer before deciding whether to buy an IIoT platform or develop one in-house. The most important include:

• How much freedom and customization do you need?
• What’s your timeline for deploying the platform?
• What skills and knowledge are available in-house?
• How will you tackle the compliance and security requirements?
• Can you maintain the solution over the long term?
• And the culprit of them all – What’s your budget?

There are no right or wrong answers, as it always depends on your specific situation. So please take a moment to think about it, and then let’s look at your options.

Building Your Own IIoT Platform

Developing a production-ready IIoT platform from scratch is a massive endeavor that requires extensive time, effort, expertise—and let’s not forget, a considerable budget. Cisco’s research shows that 60% of IoT projects fail at the proof-of-concept stage, with only 26% of companies considering their IoT initiatives a success. On the other hand, a more recent study by Microsoft shows that IIoT projects today have a 14% higher success rate than five years ago. So, if you have the right resources and confidence in your team, this could be a worthwhile challenge.

Advantages of building in-house

• Full Control: You have total control over the development process and can tailor every aspect of the platform to fit your specific needs.
• Utilize In-House Expertise: You can leverage your team’s expertise, from electrical engineering and development to cloud administration.
• Innovation Opportunities: Developing your own platform allows you to push the boundaries of current technology, potentially creating unique solutions with a competitive edge.

Challenges of building in-house

• High Costs: The up-front investment is substantial, and costs can quickly spiral out of control, especially as the project grows.
• Scaling Difficulties: Moving from a working prototype to a fully scalable solution that supports thousands of devices is a complex and resource-heavy task.
• Competitive Disadvantage: You may lose focus on your core business while dedicating resources to platform development, which can put you at a market disadvantage.
• Ongoing Maintenance: Development is never truly “finished.” The platform will require continuous updates, maintenance, and support.

A possible development scenario

Consider a manufacturing company that opted to develop its IIoT platform in-house. While they succeeded in creating a system that perfectly fit their unique operations, the project took three years to complete and cost three times the initial estimate. By the time the system was fully operational, they had lost market share to competitors who had adopted off-the-shelf solutions much faster.

Buying an IIoT Platform

Buying a ready-made IIoT solution can be a faster and more cost-effective option, especially if your primary goal is to deploy swiftly and with minimal hassle.

Advantages when buying a platform

• Quick Deployment: You avoid reinventing the wheel and can have the platform up and running in a fraction of the time.
• Comprehensive Features: Many platforms offer robust out-of-the-box features like remote monitoring and predictive maintenance.
• Ongoing Updates and Support: Vendors typically provide continuous updates and long-term support, ensuring the platform remains up-to-date with evolving technologies.

Challenges when buying a platform

• Limited Customization: Off-the-shelf solutions may not offer the flexibility you need, and certain critical features could be missing.
• Vendor Lock-In: You may find yourself tied to a vendor’s ecosystem, which could limit your ability to innovate or adapt in the future.
• Feature Overload: While platforms come with a lot of features, many of them might not be relevant to your specific use case, leading to unnecessary complexity.

A possible purchase scenario

Imagine a logistics company that decided to purchase an out-of-the-box IIoT solution. Deployment was swift, and they were able to monitor their assets in real time within weeks. However, as their business evolved, they found that the platform lacked customization options crucial to scaling their new operations, leading to vendor-related limitations.

Combining Both Approaches – The Hybrid Model

There’s a third option that strikes a balance between buying and building: the hybrid approach. Here, you purchase a robust, ready-made platform and then customize it to suit your specific needs.

The Spotflow IoT platform supports this model at its foundation. We can deploy and run the platform in your environment and tailor it to your requirements. So, if you need just a subset of features, we can change the deployment to accommodate that. Also, extending an already existing platform isn’t a problem. We can plug your specific components into it. Our technical team will still support and update such platform instances with new features and bug fixes.

Advantages of the hybrid model

• Cost Efficiency: Most off-the-shelf solutions cover about 80% of your requirements, allowing you to focus your resources on developing the remaining 20% in-house.
• Plug-and-Play Integrations: Pre-built platforms are designed to integrate with common industry software, so you can quickly connect your data sources and begin seeing results.
• Faster Execution: Since the heavy lifting is already done, you only need to tweak the final aspects of the platform, resulting in a much faster deployment than building from scratch.

Ideal hybrid model scenario

A food processing company chose a hybrid approach, buying a platform with comprehensive monitoring capabilities and then customizing it to include proprietary machine algorithms for predictive maintenance. The platform was up and running within six months, and the customizations allowed them to optimize operations to their exact specifications.

The Right Approach for You

Ultimately, the right solution depends on the role IIoT plays in your world.

• If the platform is the core of your business and you have extensive in-house expertise, building your own may be worth the investment. However, be prepared for a long and resource-intensive journey.
• If IIoT is not central to your business, buying a ready-made platform will almost always be the more cost-effective, efficient, and lower-risk choice.
• The hybrid model offers a best-of-both-worlds solution. You get the benefit of rapid deployment combined with the flexibility to tailor the platform to your need.

At Spotflow, we offer a powerful industrial IoT platform that serves as a strong foundation for your project. We work closely with our clients to customize the solution so it integrates seamlessly with their existing systems. We support both hybrid and off-the-shelf models.

Ready to Explore Your Options?

Let’s have a chat to see how we can help you get the best of both worlds—quick deployment with customizations to make your IIoT platform truly yours. Contact us today to get started!

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