Once companies have decided to invest in their IoT strategy, the process of designing and building an IoT solution begins. Having evaluated their own internal capabilities and decided what solution components they will build themselves, the next decision is selecting suppliers to help complete an end-to-end IoT solution. This is no easy task, and survey results show that supplier diversity and offer complexity is one of the biggest challenges facing IoT solution deployments. There are literally hundreds of suppliers that can assist in building an IoT solution, with some value chain elements already having over a hundred suppliers.

Overcoming this challenge and providing insight on choosing IoT solution partners is the focus of the third in a series of white papers entitled Real IoT. This white paper will provide a review of the IoT value chain across hardware, networks and value-added services for the important technologies and supplier categories. It will then review the top six assessment criteria that can be used to select suppliers to create an IoT solution. It will conclude with four market segment examples identifying the critical IoT value chain elements and important supplier requirements using the aforementioned assessment criteria.