The Long Tail of IoT Apps

Most of you, including myself, are guilty of having used predictions about the many billions of devices to be connected by the year 20xx. However, much fewer of you have realized that whatever the actual number is, it does not matter that much.

"The true value of IoT is being realized when the software and services come together to enable the capture, interpretation, and action on data" Carrie MacGillavray, IDC

Connected devices are just one of many sources of data. How numerous they are does not matter as much as how data - whatever its source - is put into context to produce meaningful insights, which in turn drive business outcomes. No surprise then that software will be the fastest-growing area of IoT technology spending over the next years.

It is applications software (aka apps) that turn data into insights and then drive business outcomes. But have you ever read or made predictions about how many IoT apps will support the massive IoT market growth? I would only dare to predict that we will rapidly count IoT apps in millions.

Indeed, almost every single enterprise will require its own suite of customized IoT apps, tailored to the enterprise's specific technology landscape. The functionalities of each app within that suite will differ, based on who the end-user is, and what insights and outcomes he/she is interested in.

This means that, in most instances, the target audience of each IoT app is very narrow, sometimes down to just one single user! As a consequence, to build those millions of IoT apps, you cannot afford to use the same methods and tools that are used for apps that target millions of users.

ThingWorx, the market-defining IoT App Enablement Platform, has been designed to address this very challenge: to easily, rapidly, and cost-effectively build and evolve IoT apps. Take a look at its latest release, ThingWorx 8.