For the 2024 Internet of Things 50 CRN picked the coolest and most noteworthy channel-friendly vendors driving innovation forward and delivering real value, whether they’re focused on hardware, software, networking and connectivity, security or industrial solutions.

There is continued demand to deploy sensors and connect machines so that data from the real world can be collected, analyzed and become the basis for better decision-making. Which is another way of saying the need for IoT remains and grows.

Businesses and other organizations worldwide are expected to drive a compound annual growth rate of 10.4 percent for IoT spending from 2023 to 2027, according to a forecast by research firm IDC last year. By 2026, that spending is expected to reach more than $1 trillion.

The use cases expected to grow the fastest include electric ve­hicle charging, next-generation loss prevention, agricultural field monitoring, and connected vending and lockers.

The sustained growth and large size of the market shows how IoT remains a compelling opportunity for solution providers that have invested in the necessary software, hardware, networking, se­curity and services capabilities for making such projects a success.

With green pastures ahead, solution providers must find the right vendors that can not only fulfill the needs of their customers but also provide the proper sales and marketing resources to enable and support the channel.

“Within IoT, it does take that army of friends to build these solutions together to make this work because there isn’t any single entity that can do everything from the sensors, the silicon, the [communications], the cloud, network connectivity, building UI, UX and managed services. There’s nobody that does all that,” said Joseph Zaloker, head of business development and global alliances at Miami-based solution provider Klika Tech.

In the land of software, vendors offer a diverse array of solutions, whether it’s cloud services for digitizing physical infrastructure, edge platforms for collecting and analyzing a wide variety of sensor and machine data, or smart building platforms for optimizing spaces.

“There’s still a huge untapped market for just data analytics,” he said.

It’s even more varied in the hardware world, where some ven­dors offer integrated hardware and software offerings for tracking assets and sensing the world while others focus on providing the necessary chips for processing the data and transmitting it across different locations.

Innovation abounds too in the category of networking and con­nectivity, where vendors orchestrate networks at varying levels of scale through hardware and software so that devices, sensors and machines can send a continuous flow of information to analyze and take action on.

Then there are the vendors focused on delivering industrial solutions to address the unique needs of companies in heavy industries such as manufacturing and utilities.

“Where I still see a lot of work and a lot of effort and a lot of focus is connecting brownfield assets to the cloud,” said Zaloker.

But with IoT systems collecting so much data and helping businesses make critical decisions about their operations, there is an immense need to protect these systems from cyberattacks and ensure that they can’t open pathways for bad actors to enter corporate networks. And it’s why security vendors are indispens­able when it comes to building such systems.

To Kemell Kassim, vice president of cyber at Warrendale, Pa.- based industrial IoT solution provider GrayMatter, there is also a growing need for companies like his to help customers adopt and manage these security solutions because many lack the resources to do so.

“We’ve been growing about 50 percent a year for cybersecurity services. And I think this year is going to [see] even more [growth] because we figured out a lot of things that people were looking for, and now we offer them with the cyber acceleration program and [our managed detection and response] solutions,” he said.

For the 2024 Internet of Things 50, which appears on the following pages, CRN picked the coolest and most noteworthy channel-friendly vendors driving innovation forward and deliver­ing real value, whether they’re focused on hardware, software, networking and connectivity, security or industrial solutions.

The 10 Coolest IoT Networking And Connectivity Companies: The 2024 Internet Of Things 50
Here are the 10 coolest IoT networking connectivity companies that are offering innovative connectivity options to help devices connect to networks, communicate, and share their valuable data to various business systems.

The 10 Coolest IoT Hardware Companies: The 2024 Internet Of Things 50
Here are the 10 coolest and most noteworthy vendors who are innovating and making big moves within the hardware space.

The 10 Coolest Industrial IoT Companies: The 2024 Internet Of Things 50
Here’s a look at 10 of the coolest and most noteworthy vendors who are innovating and making big moves within the industrial IoT space.

The 10 Coolest IoT Security Companies: The 2024 Internet Of Things 50
Here are the 10 coolest and most noteworthy vendors who are innovating and making big moves within the IoT security space.

The 10 Coolest IoT Software Companies: The 2024 Internet Of Things 50
Here are the 10 coolest and most noteworthy vendors who are innovating and making big moves within the IoT software space.