Which IoT companies lost, kept and won their charm in 2018?

Defining charm

Charm is the power of pleasing or attracting through strategy, investments, innovation, teams, products, events and media presence. A company’s attractiveness is well-received by investors, customers, developers and analysts.

Which companies lost their charm in 2018?

Cisco. According to a 2017 Cisco study, only 26% of companies surveyed said they had achieved success with their IoT initiatives. And maybe executives at Cisco felt it was time to get back to basics. Cisco took its intent-based networking concept, which it first revealed in June 2017, and extended it to the internet of things, specifically by using intent-based networking to rework IoT networks. Cisco is working on three areas in IoT: Identity Service Engine software that will help enterprises recognize devices connecting to the network; software-defined access; and its cloud-based Operational Insights service that allows companies to use location analytics to track assets and IoT devices in addition to collecting data. In 2018, some Cisco Jasper executives left the company and there were no clues of any other strategic acquisitions to lead the famous internet of everything. Maybe a cohesive IoT strategy began to take shape at Cisco last year, but I did not see expected results from its Cisco Kinetic platform, so I feel the company has not won or kept its charm.

GE Digital. In 2018, GE Digital´s leadership in industrial IoT remained in question. The parent company is expected to spin off the division into a standalone firm, and is selling a majority stake in ServiceMax, which was considered a strategic acquisition only two years ago. All the turbulence around GE negatively affected sales of its Predix IoT platform in 2018. No doubt, GE Digital lost its charm in 2018.

IBM. Despite IBM Watson IoT being named a leader in IDC’s MarketScape for 2017 Worldwide IoT Platforms, the results of its IoT investments in 2016 did not provide expected results; IBM continued to lose relevance in 2018 against other cloud IoT vendors. IBM is pushing to be a driving force in IoT and again become one of the most recognizable names in the IoT technology industry. I am confident that IBM acquiring Red Hat can help the company recover its charm in 2019. And while I have great expectations for next year, IBM lost its charm in 2018.

Dell Technologies. Dell’s Edge and IoT Solutions Division announcements in 2018 have particular resonance for the channel. But I did not see the scale I expected, perhaps because the company is launching specific IoT technologies with the appropriate reseller partners in phases. Dell could not repeat the momentum of 2017; it lost its charm in 2018.

SAP Leonardo. After investing $2.2 billion in IoT and partner opportunities, rolling out new applications and services around IoT and making efforts to reduce the complexity of developing and deploying IoT on SAP Leonardo, I did not see an increase in market share or winning of new customers for SAP. The company lost its charm in 2018.

Which companies kept their charm in 2018?

PTC. Since Rockwell and PTC announced their partnership in 2018 at Rockwell Automation TechED –including a $1 billion equity investment from Rockwell into PTC — the two companies have been hard at work bringing their respective offerings into alignment. Before the end of the year, they released their first collaborative offering, FactoryTalk InnovationSuite, which provides improved data insights through a single source of operations visibility and systems status. PTC also partnered with Microsoft to help customers accelerate their digital transformation strategies in IoT. The company announced in the fall of 2018 that it is preparing an $18 million restructuring plan. We will probably see the impact of that in 2019, but PTC deserves to keep its charm in 2018.

Intel. IoTSWC 2018 awarded Intel, Arm and Pelion for their innovative, jointly developed technology that enables users to connect any IoT device to the cloud in a matter of seconds. Reducing the complexity of IoT development, Intel revamped its IoT roadmap in 2018 to benefit developers and integrators. Other news that has helped Intel keep its charm included Intel Capital pumping $72 million into AI, IoT, cloud and silicon startups, with $115 million invested in 2018. Dell also combined tools from its portfolio with technology from Intel and partners in the Dell Technologies IoT Solutions Partner Program.

Did you know Intel processes more than a 5 billion data points a day in its factories? The chipmaker laid out a white paper talking about how it deals with data. Yes, it’s selling Intel products, but as a manufacturer that makes billions of chips a year, it’s also practicing what it preaches and can offer useful insights to others. Intel deserves to keep its charm in 2018.

AWS. At AWS re:Invent 2018, Amazon announced a variety of AWS IoT releases. Also 2018, AWS Greengrass extended functionality with connectors to external applications, hardware root-of-trust security and isolation configurations. Additionally, AWS IoT Device Management now provides new features for fleet indexing and jobs, and AWS IoT SiteWise became available in preview. I have no doubt that AWS kept its charm in 2018.

Which companies won their charm in 2018?

Microsoft. Microsoft is now the world’s most valuable company. It made a major statement earlier in 2018 when it announced a $5 billion commitment to IoT projects for the next four years. That new investment has already resulted in new products, such as Azure Sphere and Azure Digital Twins. The company also launched its IoT deployment and management platform, Azure IoT Central, to the general public. New customers, new partners and good recommendations from analysts helped the Redmond, Wash.-based company win its charm 2018.

Arm. The list of Arm’s acquisitions in 2018 includes enterprise data management leader, Treasure Data; IoT connectivity and device management company, Stream Technologies; and security company, ChaoLogix. These acquisitions and the new Pelion IoT Platform will give Arm businesses superpowers. For the second consecutive year, Arm is a top winner of IoT charm.

Google. Google I/O 2018 marked a new era for IoT devices with new Google Assistant capabilities. Also in 2018, Google bought Xively to improve its IoT platform; the company invested in creating a strong ecosystem by adding new IoT partners. Finally, Google forayed into edge computing with Cloud IoT Edge and TPU. These are good reasons to include Google in the winner’s list.

Of the list of potential candidates that I followed last year, only Google won its charm last year. The other top companies that I followed included Salesforce, Oracle, Hitachi Vantara, Sierra Wireless, Huawei, Bosch, Sigfox and HPE, none of which deserve to be in this list yet.

This year, besides telcos, IoT service providers and IoT startups, I will also follow top IoT vendors including C3IoT, SAS, Software AG, Uptake, FogHorn and Siemens MindSphere.

Which companies will be competing to win their charm in 2019?

As we continue to make IoT predictions in 2019, I will continue analyzing which companies will be on the IoT charm list in 2019.

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