Despite the high economic potentials associated with Industry 4.0, medium-sized manufacturing companies are still relatively reluctant to approach the topic. In particular, the evaluation of large data streams for the optimization of process flows or for downstream services is hardly used. Accordingly, useful higher-level cloud services are rarely used for this purpose. In view of scarce resources, it is not easy for SMEs to assess the technological maturity of corresponding solutions and to estimate their economic benefit for the company. There is a lack of a planned approach to implementation on the part of management. A lack of standards and norms for interface technologies is another reason why investments in the integration of IT systems are not made or postponed.