Think of your product as part of an ecosystem. This ecosystem consists of all the parts and machines associated with your product to deliver value to the end users. This includes everything that your product uses, as well as the parts of the machines around it.

The whole system provides a certain value to your end users. This value can be high if it provides a critical function, such as security.

The value of your ecosystem can be measured using criticality and importance. The cost of your devices and the cost of the service required to fix them are the financial impact. There is also the social impact, which can be measured using the comfort or convenience that you provide to the end users. The social impact can be high if the product ecosystem works in aspects such as security and safety.

An ecosystem of machines

A good indicator to know whether it has a high or low value is to get an estimate of the number of people directly and indirectly impacted by the ecosystem of your product.

Once we get a fair idea of the value of the ecosystem, we can investigate how valuable you are within it. A combination of these two can help us make a better decision with respect to IOT platforms.