The Industrial IoT (IIoT) segment is the most mature IoT segment, measured by the % of developers in this segment in productive roles, according to the Vision Mobile IoT Megatrends 2016 report. However, the current revenues for IIoT sales into any target application are still small, although most in the industry believe that the number of connected devices and revenues will be very significant by 2020.

One of the most distinctive aspects of IIoT is the breadth of applications that can take advantage of IoT platforms. Each vertical has its own (significant number) of IoT applications that are, or can be implemented.

The go-to-market challenge for an IIoT vendor trying to reach critical mass is in identifying and building a relationship with a different department in each company for each IoT application. Also, these vendors typically do not have the deep knowledge of the applications and the business in the various market segments, due to a lack of direct expertise .

The key to scaling, according to a  Moor Insights & Strategy blog article, is going to market through System Integrators (SI), who have been developing relationships and delivering Operations Technology (OT rather than IT) solutions for years. Whether large SIs such as Accenture and Capgemini, or niche players, their traditional role is to fill the gap between vendors and targeted market segments. Thus the answer to nailing revenues for IIoT vendors may be to build a robust System Integrator channel.