Axonize

Axonize developed an IoT orchestration and application enablement platform designed to let organizations build and run multiple IoT applications across verticals without extensive engineering work. The platform connects apps, devices, systems and protocols (both IoT and non-IoT), lets users self-configure business logic, and consolidates data into unified dashboards. Its stated design goal was for customers to launch new smart services within days using minimal DevOps resources and near-zero engineering hours, with all platform elements configurable and extensible so that business logic and customizations could be reused across separate IoT applications.

The product exposed capabilities including dashboards and widgets, device and group management, firmware updates, product and group templates, custom events, alarms, rules, user and role management, audits, reports and multi-application management, documented for both end users and developers. The company described six core technologies underpinning the platform: hierarchical business logic for centralized management of multiple customers and projects; a CloudGateway that ingests and normalizes data from protocols such as TCP, UDP, Modbus, OPC UA, SNMP, HTTP, AMQP, MQTT and web sockets, including legacy devices; logic hooks that trigger external code or machine learning analytics; a universal, codeless and extensible schema model for entities such as products, devices and applications; and an intelligent edge component that runs rules or machine learning directly on IP devices.

Since the 2021 acquisition, Axonize operates as part of Planon, supporting real estate and facility management use cases such as service delivery digitization, space utilization and cleaning workflows, maintenance and space management, sustainability initiatives, and energy consumption and asset performance insight.

Founding story

Axonize was founded in 2015 by CEO Janiv Ratson together with three co-founders who had worked in IoT platforms since 2003 and had connected more than 25 million devices to platforms they built. They observed that they were repeatedly re-developing essentially the same server for each customer, and set out to build a single platform capable of supporting all business types, verticals and sensors, targeting "smart enterprises" for service providers rather than individual smart products.

Business model

Axonize sold a business-to-business IoT application enablement platform aimed at system integrators, service providers and enterprises, positioned as a do-it-yourself, no-code offering that supplied backend functionality without requiring professional services or dedicated development teams. Following the Planon acquisition, the platform is delivered as part of Planon's real estate and facility management software portfolio.

Traction

Reported total funding of more than $7.8 million across Seed and Series A rounds; approximately 13 employees on record; the founding team had connected over 25 million devices to earlier platforms before starting Axonize; the company was acquired by Planon in 2021.

Latest developments

The Axonize IoT platform has fully transitioned into Planon's open platform for real estate and facility management professionals and is now referred to as Planon's IoT-enabled building management software; Axonize no longer issues separate updates or communications.