You’re completely right. Vendor lock-in and platforms shutting down are real risks. We also used Google IoT Core in our previous startup and would have been burned by its shutdown as well.
In fact, the idea for a unified IoT platform came from dealing with the complexity of setting up so many different Google Cloud services just to get data ingestion working.
I think a healthy balance between open source and commercial platforms is possible. We want to compete on reliability, UX, and features while building open device-side tooling and protocols that give users the ability to switch or self-host if they choose. We’re far from that today, but it’s the direction we want to pursue.
In fact, the idea for a unified IoT platform came from dealing with the complexity of setting up so many different Google Cloud services just to get data ingestion working.
I think a healthy balance between open source and commercial platforms is possible. We want to compete on reliability, UX, and features while building open device-side tooling and protocols that give users the ability to switch or self-host if they choose. We’re far from that today, but it’s the direction we want to pursue.
-- Sid, Fostrom Co-Founder