The Internet of Things (IoT) concept was first coined by Keven Ashton in 1999 during a presentation to Proctor and Gamble and later referenced by him in the MIT Auto-ID Center. IoT is one of the fastest growing technologies that is gaining momentum in the various domains like transportation, healthcare, industrial automation, education sector etc. The main idea of IoT is to connect the physical world with the digital world. The foundation technology for IoT is RFID technology, which is used to identify, track and monitor any object with RFID tags and allow microchips to transmit the identification information to a reader through wireless communication. 

Nowadays, IoT applications have already moved further away than just simple RFIDs, incorporating different sources of data collection from sensors. This data stream needs to be moved somewhere where this (big) data can be processed using, for example, machine learning techniques. This place is what we call an IoT platform. For companies to run their specific IoT applications, an IoT platform is then needed. The IoT platform provides important services and features to applications: endpoint management, connectivity and network management, analysis and processing, data management, application development, security, event processing, monitoring, access control and interfacing. 

From 2015 onward, there has been a rapid growth in IoT technologies so that the number of connected devices and platforms have steadily increased. For example, there were 260 IoT platforms in 2015, which increased to 360 in 2016 and 450 in 2017. Due to the technological improvements, new IoT devices emerged and the requirements of the IoT applications and platforms changed. Such a technological change creates many challenges for businesses, governments and companies, which have little experience about the infrastructure of IoT and IoT platforms. Selecting a suitable IoT platform among all existing options is a tricky task since this decision needs to incorporate not only the current needs but also, the potential future ones.

IoT applications need a platform to run smoothly and handle the data so that companies can take future decisions based on the data processed by the IoT platform. Hundreds of IoT platforms are available and finding the most suitable IoT platform for a specific IoT application is becoming increasingly difficult. The problem is compounded by a lack of experience and knowledge, and in some cases, a company may select a platform without adequate requirements analysis, which later leads to problems. When developing an IoT application for business needs, IoT platforms are the first place that can provide the facilities for deploying and running the business application. There is high competition between the various IoT platforms in the market. The five well-known IoT platforms are: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM Watson, and Oracle platform. Their basic technical features are compared in terms of security, data analytics, protocols, visualization tool, data format, and application environment. In short, for the companies interested to use IoT in their business, they have to follow a few steps.

 1) Identify the business requirements

2) Should have knowledge of the IoT

3) Should have knowledge of the IoT platform and functions these platforms are providing.

4) Tools used for the business application