Cyber-physical system platforms are information infrastructures connecting different cyber-physical systems and other information systems. This infrastructure is the base for realizing the “Industrie 4.0” paradigm aiming for collaborative industrial processes involving smart objects and smart factories. In inter-organizational value networks, a cyber-physical system platform becomes a shared resource that has to be managed cooperatively along its lifecycle. This paper looks at cyber-physical system platforms from a lifecycle perspective. It describes the complexity of networks of cyber-physical systems and cyber-physical system platforms within value networks and the resulting restrictions influencing their various lifecycles. A selection of different lifecycle models from literature is reviewed to extract aspects that provide a promising basis for the development of a specific lifecycle model of cyber-physical system platforms.