A Comprehensive Framework for Analyzing IoT Platforms: A Smart City Industrial Experience

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive evaluation framework for IoT platforms to assist in selecting suitable architectures, ensuring quality and user satisfaction in smart city industrial contexts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel evaluation framework for IoT platforms based on design science research, addressing the lack of comprehensive guidelines for platform assessment.

Findings

Framework enables unbiased comparison of IoT platforms

Application in scenarios demonstrates practical utility

Provides insights for consumers and providers

Abstract

The compliance of IoT platforms to quality is paramount to achieve users satisfaction. Currently, we do not have a comprehensive set of guidelines to appraise and select the most suitable IoT platform architectures that meet relevant criteria. This paper is a tentative response to this critical knowledge gap where we adopted the design science research approach to develop a novel evaluation framework. Our research, on the one hand, stimulates an unbiased competition among IoT platform providers and, on the other hand, establishes a solid foundation for IoT platform consumers to make informed decisions in this multiplicity. The application of the framework is illustrated in example scenarios. Moreover, lessons learned from applying design science research are shared.