IoT Platforms: Dominance of AWS

Needless to say there is no dearth of IoT Platforms offering you the opportunity to get your “things” and “devices” connected, and reap the benefits of IoT.

It is interesting to note that Amazon continues to dominate in this segment of Cloud Computing as well. I ran a rudimentary script to lookup up where the developer sites are hosted for different IoT platforms, the results were pretty interesting – 8 out of 10 are being hosted on AWS (Disclaimer – it is not clear to me if their entire platform is on AWS or only the developer front end). This is actually 8 out of 9 since I wrote the script originally because Thingworx and Axeda platforms have merged (all three URLs, the two old ones, and the new ThingWorx.com resolve to the same IP – 104.130.163.78).

And the surprise was Nest – an Alphabet/Google Company is still (after more than two years of being acquired) – has its Developer site running on AWS!

Take a look at the screenshot of the output below, and if you want to run the script yourself, and try other sites – copy the script at Gist.

Implications:

It also brings up an interesting challenge for these companies now that Amazon has AWS IoT – Cloud Services for Connected Devices.  AWS IoT may not offer the level of completeness that others may offer such as Ayla or Exosite but the AWS IoT feature set is comprehensive enough to reduce the differentiation between them. The other choice is to go with Google, Microsoft and IBM – and all three of them also have IoT enhancements and features to their cloud offerings.

The choice of not going with Cloud PaaS is equally devastating because it is going to be costly for IoT platforms or they will lack the scalability.

I feel this will accelerate consolidation in the IoT platform space (like Microsoft’s acquisition of Solair) or companies being unable to offer the scale that is needed for IoT.

 

Amazon Echo: Bringing Voice to Internet of Things

Amazon is investing heavily in voice recognition – the Fire TV, and now followed by Echo. I have signed up for an invite to buy the Echo – but what I am really waiting for is Amazon opening up developer access to the Echo. Echo could be the Home Butler, the Digital Assistant to automate and manage the home. It is a step in the right direction – pulling out your Smartphone to control devices is not ideal – yes you don’t have to get up from the couch to turn off the lights (with the phone that is) but asking “Alexa” to do so wouldn’t be just cool, but mighty useful!

Amazon Kindle: Why it cannot match the success of Apple iPod?

Amazon dropped its price on Kindle 2 today.  Reading the article prompted me to think about the market for eReaders and comparing them to MP3 players.

Remember when Apple iPod was launched in 2001? In the beginning it attracted the die hard Apple fans, and MP3 aficionados but within three years it had overtaken all MP3 players and established itself as a clear winner. Apple sold 376,000 iPods in the first year, second year they sold 937,000 – crossing a million in the first two years since introduction.

Contrast that with the Amazon Kindle – estimates range from 189,000 to 600,000 in the first year. A February ’09 post on paidContent estimates the Kindle sales to 374,000 life-to-date.

The same article talks about why Kindle sales cannot be compared to Apple iPod:

—The iPod was introduced in 2001, which is very different period than 2009 when it comes to consumer electronics, not to mention consumption of digital media. So just because initial sales are comparable, or even greater for the Kindle, doesn’t mean that you can draw any longer-term grand conclusions.

—The number of people who read every day is likely much less than the number of people who listen to music daily (25% of all people do not read books at all
– can the same be said about music?).  As a result, early adopters have likely driven early sales, and sales growth will probably come down to earth once the device has reached the masses.

Consumers who  purchased MP3 players and Apple iPod had access to massive amounts of free content to load on their iPods:

• Digitize their own existing CDs
• If not for their own CDs they could borrow from their friends or family
  
• or even worse download pirated music
  

Note the Apple model was the reverse of the Gillette Razor model – Apple makes it money and tons of money on selling devices i.e. iPods not on selling music.

The challenge with Amazon Kindle and eReaders in general is that consumers are forced to buy content given that the free content is limited or boring. It is extremely challenging to scan books and move them to the Kindle or should I say next to impossible.  Amazon has chosen a model where they are not subsidizing the Kindle and neither are they making content cheap.

Jeff Bezos would be better off either subsidizing the Kindle or content and gaining massive consumer acceptance rather than having somebody or something like iPhone steal the market from Amazon.  Having mass adoption as in tens or hundreds of millions will allow Amazon to offer content and services other than books.

Why BeagleBoard?

While my day job is @ Cisco’s SPVTG BU is Business Development and/or Product Strategy, I am certainly a geek @ heart. And hence the nature of these posts and the gadgets that I play around with…

I am going to hack with the BeagleBoard which is based on the TI OMAP 3530 (powered by the ARM Cortex-A8 Core) because of the following:

1. Android has started with OMAP/ARM Cores, you can get all the source and it is based on the Linux 2.6.2x Kernel for OMAP
2. The ARM Core also powers the Apple 3G iPhone – it is supposed to be a Samsung chip, you can find the info here.
3. As noted in #1 above, the first Android Phone – the T-Mobile G1 (by HTC) is also powered using OMAP/ARM core.
4. The Amazon Kindle 2 is also powered by an ARM-11 Core, look here for details.

You see the common theme, it has been a long, long time since I hacked/coded on the ARM core but I am sure this will all come back to me….

(BTW need to look at investing in ARM Holdings, the company that licenses the ARM Cores …)