More and more suppliers, customers or competitors have already started to implement an IoT platform. It can provide a company with loads of benefits and can therefore be very valuable. Nevertheless, there is a huge number of IoT platform providers on the market all providing an individual solution for companies in different niches or segments. Therefore, it is a challenge to decide on the best suitable provider and the design approach.

First, the requirements of the company have to be defined, which is done with the help of internal interviews. In total, 6 internal interviews are held in order to determine all needs Ronal has. Afterwards, different IoT platform providers are analyzed in terms of functionality and ranked according to the requirements given. In the end, a recommendation about which IoT platform provider suits best is made.

The first result of the work is the complete set of requirements. In total, 18 individual requirements are collected, described, and weighted according to their importance. Next, six IoT platform providers are analyzed in detail including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Watson, Hitachi Lumada, and PTC ThingWorx. Additionally, the design approach of the platform providers (vertical or horizontal) is described. The description of the functionality leads to the ranking of the platform. Each platform is ranked and graded according to the requirements given and the offered functionality. In the end, there is an overview of all rankings of the IoT platform providers which leads to the recommendation of implementing the IoT platform provider with the highest score and a horizontal platform design approach.