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PTC ‘playing to win the IoT platform war’

Huge channel push into IOT from the manufacturing software outfit

By Joao Lima

PTC and its company ThingWorx opened the LiveWorx convention in Boston with a major channel push.

Russ Fadel, President at PTC said the number of partners working with the company soared since 2010 and that "demand is where partners make money".

PTC, a $1.3bn software firm bought Thingworx in 2014 for $112m.

Joe Biron, VP of Channel Programs for PTC highlighted the investment priorities for the company.

Universal connectivity, end-to-end data management, devops for cost effective reliable and secure implementation, an IoT application enablement platform and device management applications are the "five essential elements to have a world class IoT platform".

The firm also outlined what it sees as the three key areas for a successful IoT strategy.

These are edge connectivity evolution with APIs enhancement, next-gen agent and pluggable cloud communication.

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Another key point for PTC is a distributed, highly-available data architecture.

Mr Biron said: "Scale is one of the top challenges of IoT.

"It does not matter how many devices someone has, someone else has more."

The firm also wants a globally distributed infrastructure to give the chance to connect devices and others anywhere with points of access.

He said: "In IoT partnering is really the strategy. If our partners win, we will also win.

"PTC is playing to win the IoT platform war and we are the largest and fastest growing platform out there with partners being instrumental to our success."

The company predicts that by 2020 there will be 50 billion connected sensors, devices and machines, with the total number of applications topping 500 million, up from 7 billion and 5 million in 2010 respectively. By 2031 there will be one trillion connected "things".

Rob Gremley, EVP IoT at PTC said the company had grown 20% every year and went from zero to a billion dollars in a decade.

The company has focused mainly on manufacturing, but will change its strategy as "IoT will offer an opportunity to look further".

The firm said it has 30,000 current active costumers and 750 partners.

"We have a tremendous appetite to expand our footprint to other markets and the move towards IoT is quite natural," Mr Gremley said "With partners we can be a massive IoT player in the next years."

PTC’s IoT platform uses a circular sequential approach that reinforces itself.

Mr Fadel said that first users adopt, consequently creating an ecosystem which will generated new applications. The process repeats itself over and over delivering solutions to PTC’s IoT platform.

The company’s IoT segments include smart connected systems, smart connected products and smart connected operations.

Additions to PTC’s portfolio

PTC will organise an IoT innovation contest for the best IoT applications and extensions built with ThingWorx.

Chris Kuntz, VP for IoT Ecosystem Programs at PTC said $100,000 in prizes will awarded to the winners.

He said the firm will target solution providers alongside its channel push on system integrator, channel partner, OEM partner and tech partners. The channel programme will push vertical specific solutions as a service.

In order to accomplish its "enablement", PTC will also introduce the ThingWorx referral program.

Companies involved will earn incentives for IoT lead referrals, with $1000 per lead to be paid per closed proof of concept.

Mr Kuntz also listed that what’s needed for an Iot solution is a certified hardware, platform extensions, integrators to third party business service, applications to deliver value and a solution provider

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