Reference architectures for the development of software systems are used to bring clarity to complexity. By design, reference model architectures inform practice and help deliver superior solutions. A significant challenge in reference architecture design is to recreate in a model an approach that provides utility to the practitioner in the real world. Innovative and useful designs tend to either occur by adapting an existing reference architecture to a new context or by exaptation from an

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... ing, successful commercial implementations of a complex system. In either case, we look to evaluate an extant reference architecture in context to inform researcher and practitioner alike. This research initiates a comparison of an existing, innovative commercial IoT platform -developed organically over a period of several years in multiple industry settings -against the Architectural Reference Model developed by IoT-A. The contributions of the paper include (1) an explicit description of the existing commercial IoT platform, (2) a description of the IoT-A reference model, (3) a mapping method for comparison and gap analysis between the two, and, (4) a discussion of a means to enrich IoT-A with the addition of features critical to a commercially viable IoT.