The industrial IoT (IIoT) has already proved a graveyard for some start-ups, unable to find a clear focus amid all the competing platforms, devices, standards and formats. Litmus Automation, founded in August 2013 in the San Francisco bay area, appears to have cleared the major first hurdles by finding relevant partners that can help open up the market, as well as some prestigious customers. It has done this by focusing on the unglamorous area of support for legacy devices and protocols, describing itself as a brownfield specialist aiming to help factories and plants manage and collect data from legacy equipment. The firm’s co-founder and COO (Chief Operations Officer) John Younes likened this to having a universal remote that a manufacturer…