Companies looking to start their journey towards IoT adoption are faced with a myriad of companies touting solutions, but one organisation intends to simplify this process.
The IoT M2M Council (IMC) has announced that it will develop RFP documents that can be used as templates to procure IoT software.
The council’s leadership committee – comprising senior IoT buyers from Fortune 500 companies – will collaborate with solution providers to develop the documents in an open-source process, and host them on a wiki website.
According to the council, the “explosion in the number of IoT software vendors, and no clear-cut categories for these platforms” is a motivating factor for the initiative, and that customers are seeking clarity and direction for IoT software procurement.
Following completion of this initiative, the IMC intends to award compliance to participating software vendors, and include these providers into the published templates.
RFPs for different vertical applications will be created, and further segmented into functional sections, such as connectivity management, device management, and data analytics.
The completed RFPs will be promoted to its 20,000-plus membership – which includes companies such as Aeris, HPE, Ingenu, Inmarsat, Intel, PTC, Sigfox, Telit, u-blox, and Vodafone - as well as non-members.
The council expects these documents to be completed over the coming month, with vendor validation to occur soon thereafter.
Publication of the completed RFPs including validated vendors is earmarked for September.
In a statement, IMC chairman and CTO of IoT solutions provider Digi International Joel Young said: “The concept is to bring buyers and sellers of IoT solutions together with a common language and expectations.”
He said that given the state of the market, focusing on software platforms was a good place to start for the council, but added this is only the first step.
“We expect to begin work on RFP sets for connectivity services [in September], followed quickly by various categories of hardware, integration services, and more,” he added.