An application marketplace is a digital distribution platform for applications, mostly used in the mobile context. All of us are familiar with Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store marketplaces. They show how flourishing the marketplace business is by providing a platform for developers to distribute applications to a wide audience. This potential has awakened the interest among the industrial space by combining it with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), or the so-called fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0).

The pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of the exhibition and conference industry. The Hannover Messe (HMI) and Smart Production Solutions (SPS) had to be canceled due to the corona pandemic and where staged virtually for the first time as digital events. The 6th edition of Industry of Things World (IoTW), a leading event on Industrial IoT was held as a hybrid event on 21.09 and 22.09.2020. Both the speakers and participants could choose to attend either on-site or online via the digital event platform hubs101. This made me curious about how everything is changing in the new normal.

The IO-Link community has specified how IO-Link devices and IO-Link masters can be integrated with JSON data models. The definition is fieldbus independent and follows IT concepts with REST, and MQTT. Let us take a look if this specification is a boost for Industry 4.0.