Industrial IoT Vendor Evaluation Guide
How to Select a Platform, Integrator, and Hardware Without Getting Locked In.
The IIoT market is crowded and confusing. This guide helps you cut through the marketing noise to evaluate the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and architecture implications of different vendors.
1The IIoT vendor landscape ↓
Platform vendors: AWS IoT, Azure IoT Hub, PTC ThingWorx, Siemens MindSphere, Inductive Automation Ignition. They provide the data infrastructure, connectivity management, analytics, and application layer.
Hardware vendors: Rockwell, Siemens, Honeywell, Moxa, Advantech. Sensors, gateways, and edge devices.
System integrators: the companies that actually design and deploy IIoT solutions using vendor technology.
2The open vs proprietary platform decision ↓
Proprietary platforms: tightly integrated with their own hardware, well-supported, significant lock-in risk if you want to use other vendors' equipment later.
Open platforms: built on open standards (OPC-UA, MQTT, SQL), works with any PLC brand. Preferred for multi-vendor environments like most manufacturing facilities.
Data portability: your data should be exportable in open formats. Any vendor who resists this is planning for lock-in. Ask specifically about data egress capabilities and costs.
3Total cost of ownership — the hidden fees↓
Year 1 vs Ongoing: Year 1 is hardware and implementation. Ongoing is platform subscription, support contracts, internal operations.
Hidden costs to negotiate: data egress fees (cloud platforms charge for moving data out), user license scaling, professional services for integrations not covered by native connectors.
5-year TCO model: build a spreadsheet with 5-year cost including all of the above. The cheapest platform subscription is rarely the cheapest total solution once integration costs are factored in.
4System integrator selection ↓
Why the integrator matters: the best platform deployed by a mediocre integrator fails. The second-best platform deployed by a great integrator often succeeds.
OT-IT hybrid competency: ask about their OT team (controls engineers, PLC programmers) AND their IT team (cloud engineers, cybersecurity). Pure IT integrators often don't understand OT.
Industry domain expertise: an integrator who has deployed in your specific industry understands failure modes and operations culture.