Advances in Internet of Things, 2014, 4, 37-45
Published Online October 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ait
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ait.2014.44006
How to cite this paper: Silva, E.M. and Maló, P. (2014) IoT Testbed Business Model. Advances in Internet of Things, 4, 37-45.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ait.2014.44006
IoT Testbed Business Model
Edgar M. Silva
1,2
, Pedro Maló
1,2
1
Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia (FCT), Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL), Caparica, Portugal.
2
UNINOVA, Centro de Tecnologia e Sistemas (CTS), Caparica, Portugal
Email: ems@uninova.pt , pmm@uninova.pt
Received 17 July 2014; revised 15 August 2014; accepted 15 September 2014
Copyright © 2014 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Abstract
The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is today one of the hypes in the technological world but despite the
enormous attention and research investment, the clear business value is still hard to perceive. IoT
deployments are costly to be installed, managed and maintained, and need to provide a very clear
value to justify the investments. For another viewpoint, IoT technologies need to be proven before
deployment, which implies the need to test and assess IoT solutions in real settings and involve
the actual target users. And as such, this presents an opportunity to have IoT deployments with a
clear business model mainly focused on real-life large-scale research and technological experi-
mentation. This would mean having a sustainable IoT infrastructure in-place based on the provi-
sion of experimentation services and a trial environment to industry and research, which then
could also present an opportunity to establish added-value (business) services. This is the exact
idea of the flagship SmartSantander testbed facility and especially its major deployment in the city
of Santander, Spain. The SmartSantander facility business model is built around experimental-
ly-driven research and technology development thus attracting many experimenters from indus-
try and European research projects. This model makes it possible to sustain an outstanding
large-scale IoT deployment of around 12,000 sensors and on top of it the development of new the
development of new services and applications especially targeting the needs of users (citizens,
businesses, authorities) in smart-cities. This paper studies the business model of outstanding
SmartSantander facility in order to provide a generic Business Model for IoT testbeds that can
provide guidance and be adapted by owners (or owners to-be) wishing to exploit their IoT dep-
loyments as facilities supporting experimentation and trials of IoT solutions.
Keywords
Internet-of-Things, Testbed, Business Model, SmartSantander
1. Introduction
The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is today a reality. Everyday flourishes new IoT deployments all over the world and