The Internet of Things (IoT) brings with it many opportunities, especially in relation to the area of smart cities. But due to the increasing complexity of technological solutions, the city of Copenhagen has many challenges to solve, to achieve sufficient value from IoT. An increasing trend to ease the implementation of IoT solutions is to adopt an IoT platform. Many highly capable IT vendors offer IoT platforms, but despite the seemingly optimal match between IoT platforms, and cities’ needs, the adoption of such solutions is lacking. The research presented in this report is therefore aimed at understanding how an IoT platform provider’s business model can be adjusted, to match the needs of Copenhagen.

To address this question, an analysis consisting of the following three elements is presented; a set of requirement specifications to clarify the needs of the city, a hype cycle and maturity model to forecast the potential of the IoT platforms, and finally the STOF- business model framework to understand how the IoT platforms can match the city’s needs.

Key findings include a medium level of maturity, and guidelines for platform providers to match Copenhagen’s needs through establishing an ecosystem around the IoT services, proving flexibility in both pricing, technologies and services, and attaining sector specific capabilities. Implementing a single IoT platform throughout the city of Copenhagen will not happen in the nearest future, but could be beneficial in many relations,
if realized.