For machines to communicate over the web–essentially sending data from sensors back and forth from cloud-based servers—there needs to be a standard software protocol.

For IoT in general, there will be very fragmented protocols.

For _industrial_ use cases, the clear winner is IEC62541, aka OPC Unified Automation [1]. There is no real alternative, so that issue is basically already settled. And from a technical point of view, its actually quite good.

[1] https://opcfoundation.org/about/opc-technologies/opc-ua/