Why is IoT so important for our future?

Our current path of technological advances is setting up the infrastructure to maximize the utilization of available resources. Nowadays, you have the chance to spend more time on improving what makes you a sentient being by delegating the boring and repetitive stuff to automatisms.

In order to build this scenario we need a backbone that can support it, we need technologies to collect and process the data we produce (Artificial Intelligence), to provide a platform that allows us to connect everywhere (5G, RFID), and a way to interconnect all those devices among them (IoT).

Every major tech player on the planet is developing its own platform in this field, Google, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alibaba already have products available often free to try for up to a year.

What is IoT?

According to the Wikipedia article cited before:

“The Internet of things (IoT) describes the network of physical objects — “things” or objects — that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the Internet.”

Although this is not new as we have been building computer networks since the late 1950s, now we are talking about the imminent interconnection of a wide variety of devices out there.

Benefits of IoT

Having all devices interconnected offers numerous benefits to modern life, to name a few:

• Accessing data everywhere at the lowest cost. With IoT capabilities, consuming vast amounts of data is a breeze. Protocols are being designed to have this data readily available for the process involved in real-time. Just imagine how fast you can pivot a product with this amount of data in your feed 24/7.
• Understanding data consumption patterns. Connected devices are being integrated into existing and new business processes increasing productivity, enhancing customer experience, and generating additional revenue streams. Regardless of the industry, companies can use IoT to effectively tailor and enhanced their service and increase the value of the business.
• Improving your efficiency and effectiveness. The chance of getting things done in the most effective way increases exponentially when using all these technologies combined in a proper way. We could have better remote working, better workflow automation, and since IoT is going to be omnipresent, it will help us to be more comfortable wherever we are. An IoT-enabled automation system can inform the users of a physical asset’s condition, estimate the next service interval and show causes for device failures. Do I need to say more?

Obstacles and Challenges

The Internet of things is being promoted as the promised land that awaits us when all of our devices are connected to the internet but it is unsettling to anybody concerned about its security and privacy implications. Even with the best of intentions, is not possible to tackle all security issues from the beginning.

The current trend is to ship every new product somewhat network-enabled, so the chance of having an unprotected device active in our home or industrial network is higher than ever. This could lead to unwanted connections within your trusted network since most of our devices can gather information through their internal microphones and cameras.

On top of that, while this device is connected to WiFi you have the chance of controlling your network traffic in the router. Once your device is connected to a 5G network, the enforcement of this control cannot be done so easily. The wide adoption of these technologies has still to go under ethical scrutiny, some vendors give owners some control over this data stream; others explicitly do not.

Eventually, a new set of standards and proper legislation has to be created to somehow regulate the correct use of this data, but ultimately an ethical use of it would make the difference for the final user. Currently, the W3C has the Web of Things as a standard to follow when manufacturing new IoT-ready equipment.

If we add a blockchain protocol to our IoT-enabled devices, it can help us validate the provenance and events in a trusted, immutable ledger, across ecosystems.

Requisites for implementing IoT

To completely benefit from IoT, enterprises face many challenges, including integration of the IoT infrastructure with existing legacy systems, understanding unfamiliar data formats, and communication protocols as well as implementing new technologies across the IoT namespace. Organizations trying to switch to IoT technologies require careful planning, domain knowledge, and rigorous implementation within their teams.

First of all, it is critical to integrate IoT data streams into Big Data Analytics because of the significant amounts of data flows to pre-process in real-time. It helps to keep data streams up-to-date while accelerating data quality stored in the cloud. Faster data processing at the edge can also be expected.

Most authors agree on the 5 essential requirements to implement IoT improving their opportunities to use IoT to reshape industries and societies. All these steps are not to be taken lightly and a great deal of planning is highly recommended.

Edge computing/analytics

After fully assessing lifetime device cost, additional operational costs, and creating policies to harden the security around devices with proper encryption and firewalls, an organization can consider edge computing.

This would put sensors or capture devices on the edge of a network with the final goal of gathering data from the process, also enabling data analysis close to where data is captured.

Data ingestion and stream processing

This is collecting, storing, integrating, and analyzing real-time data from endpoint devices. This has proved as the principal key barrier to a successful IoT implementation.

Since the cloud-based IoT services are the ones in charge to handle all this data flow, the data has to be imported into a format they can work on. Data normalization processes should be put in place to avoid data corruption or data incompatibility, taking into account we are gathering data from multiple devices and sensors.

Security and device management

Here we start to go deep in complexity, now is imperative these devices are provisioned securely, communicate efficiently, and are updated frequently to avoid security issues.

While in the planning stage, we should correctly dimension the project to avoid the overuse of sensors, which in time could represent a breach point within our network. Device management covers the hardware, software, and processes that ensure devices are properly registered, managed, secured, and upgraded.

Cold path and advanced analytics

With all the data that needs to be processed a batch layer (cold path) that stores all incoming data in its raw form and performs batch processing on the data is in order.

The result of this processing is stored as a batch view. It is a slow-processing pipeline, executing complex analysis, combining data from multiple sources over a longer period (such as hours or days), and generating new information such as reports and machine learning models.
A speed layer and a serving layer (warm path) analyze data in real-time. This layer is designed for low latency, at the expense of accuracy. It is a faster-processing pipeline that archives and displays incoming messages, and analyzes these records, generating short-term critical information and actions such as alarms. With this, we are a step away from having the analytics we need.

Enterprise integration with business systems

This is the final step to start benefiting from all the previous work, now we have to integrate what we built into the existing information flow. As every IoT implementation is different, special care for the final consumers of this data should be employed to identify skills that might have to be updated and the way they best consume data. Integration with business applications and enterprise systems enables the sharing of raw and processed data, as well as analysis-driven insights.

With deep enterprise integration, the IoT architecture can deliver benefits such as improved efficiencies, reduced costs, increased sales, heightened customer satisfaction, and the ability to create and lead new markets. To share data and insights, businesses need mechanisms such as application programming interface (API) gateways, service buses, and custom connectors.

Conclusion

The Internet of Things has already changed the modern industry and with that everyday life, whether we were prepared or not for it. You should expect these technologies to disrupt even more in all areas of the modern world and the progression of this technology most likely will be exponential.

We are already in the first stages of this revolution, is clear that home consumers are taking the lead in adopting these technologies but the large consumers are still the industries and they have a reputation of being the last to adopt new technology.

Our future depends on how efficient are with our resources, IoT is here to help us achieve that.

Resources

1. IIoT, software top experts’ lists of future foci https://www.controldesign.com/articles/2021/iiot-software-top-experts-lists-of-future-foci/
2. The uninvited Internet of things https://lwn.net/Articles/850218/
3. 5 Dominating IoT Trends Positively Impacting Telecom Sector in 2021 https://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/5-dominating-iot-trends-positively-impacting-telecom-sector-in
4. Five essential requirements for IoT2.0 success https://futureiot.tech/five-essential-requirements-for-iot2-0-success/
5. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, 5G and IoT will be the Most Important Technologies in 2021 https://iotbusinessnews.com/2020/11/20/20369-artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-5g-and-iot-will-be-the-most-important-technologies-in-2021/