Internet of Things cloud platform provider Xively has beefed up its customer-facing capabilities by buying specialist SI and consultancy Ionia Corporation. Xively describes the acquisition as a 'template' for the future as “LogMeIn builds out an ecosystem of system integrators and grows its base of self-service customers”.
So Xively takes a further step towards a vertical and professional services focus, and further from the rather more horizontal-oriented vision that was so prominent in its Pachube and Cosm antecedents before its own acquisition by LogMeIn.
That isn't a surprise. Professional services and integration is where the money is in the current B2B-oriented IOT market. Xively is making a sensible move. Others, such as Telenor Objects, that also tried to be a horizontal enabler have come to the same conclusion.
I continue to believe that IOT will ultimately be enabled by an architecture made up of big horizontal layers and players, as the web already is. That day will come, but it hasn't come yet, and at the moment trying to be one of those players or create one of those layers is a just not profitable enough.
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