Abstract Diverse identification and positioning technologies like radio-frequency identification (RFID), real-time locating systems (RTLS), and wireless sensor net- works (WSN) are among the enablers for the Internet of Things (IoT). Although the cost-effective integration of these enabling technologies into existing enterprise infrastructures is very important for companies, integration aspects are ignored by researches frequently. Even worse, the increasing diversity of identification and po- sitioning technologies and corresponding applications leads to more expensive in- tegration and application development processes. Up to now these technologies are used rather separately in different applications, but it is only a question of time before these technologies have to be used within the same application in parallel. Furthermore it could be observed, that existing commercial middleware products aiming at integration are focusing on passive RFID only. Hence there is a need to functionally extend existing solutions. This contribution introduces an integration and application platform for diverse enabling technologies for the Internet of Things that has been derived from the requirements of real world applications. An overview on applications of the Internet of Things is given and a selection of applications that have been successfully implemented in research and development projects is exam- ined in detail. The functionalities provided by the platform and the corresponding abstract software architecture are derived from these applications.