Multi-cloud for IoT
It is clear organizations are adopting a multi-cloud strategy for their public cloud hosting providers. Industry analyst reports indicate 60–86% of organizations are adopting or plan to adopt a multi-cloud strategy. Organizations are using multiple cloud providers to avoid vendor lock-in, ensure price competition, comply with regulatory requirements and optimize the use of best services available. For more insight, Canonical has a comprehensive white paper on the future of multi-cloud.
For organizations selecting an IoT platform provider, the ability to host an IoT platform in a multi-cloud environment should be a key consideration. There are a number of compelling IoT use cases that drive the need for multi-cloud:
- Many IoT solutions need to be hosted on-premise so there is close proximity to the devices. Security, performance and reliability are some of the key driving factors for on-premise deployments. For example an oil rig with unreliable network connection will require an IoT platform to run locally to avoid disruption due to connectivity issues. A private cloud on-premise deployment is often connected with services running on a public cloud for doing high-level analysis or planning.
- IoT solutions that are deployed in different geographical regions might require different public cloud providers. For instance, an IoT solution deployed in Asia, Europe and NA might be required to use local cloud providers for data privacy regulations.
- IoT solutions often need to integrate and connect with existing enterprise and operational systems. These existing systems may already exists on public clouds or in private data center. Having the option to deploy IoT platform services on existing service providers makes it easier to manage the total solution.
- For IoT platform vendors, offering a multi-cloud strategy allows the vendor to be more responsive to customer and regional requirements.
Cloud Providers
It shouldn’t be a big surprise the cloud providers don’t offer their IoT platform services on other cloud platforms. Microsoft, AWS, Google, IBM don’t provide much flexibility in their deployment options. They all have some form of private cloud or edge offering that connects to their cloud. However, the IoT services from these cloud providers are definitely locking you into the underlining cloud platform. If you are looking for a multi-cloud IoT platform solution, these vendors don’t have much to offer.
IoT Platform Vendors
Some of the other IoT platform vendors are taking a multi-cloud approach.
Clearblade appears to have one of the most comprehensive multi-cloud offering with their support for on-prem, any cloud provider and edge deployments. For Clearblade, the supported cloud providers include AWS, Google, IBM, Micosoft Azure and Oracle.
PTC Thingworx has traditionally been an on-prem solution but they have recently announced Micorsoft Azure as being their ‘preferred cloud platform for manufacturing customers’.
Bosch IoT Suite allows customers to install their different IoT services on a variety of cloud providers, including AWS, MS Azure, IBM, SAP Leonardo and Bosch’s own managed cloud service. They also have a on-prem version.
Siemens Mindsphere is built on top of Cloud Foundry and can be deployed on AWS and MS Azure. You can also run Mindsphere on-prem with a self-hosted version of Cloud Foundry.
GE Predix allows you to deploy on-prem and a public cloud managed by GE. In July, GE announced a partnership with Microsoft to ‘ to standardize its Predix solutions on Microsoft Azure’
Hitachi Lumada allows you to deploy to AWS, Azure and On-prem.
A number of companies don’t seem to have strong multi-cloud offerings, including Software AG’s Cumulocity, SAP Leonardo or C3 IoT. My guess is this will change over time.
Disclosure: Bosch SI is a current client. Canonical has been a client.