The Internet of Things (IoT) technology possesses a vast potential to offer business value that goes beyond operational cost savings. The market of the current IoT ecosystem is largely untapped and has an excellent opportunity for IoT solutions that brings the business value by collecting and analyzing disparate data in real-time.
It is no surprise that disruptive technology such as IoT has a very complex ecosystem. Even at a basic stage, there are many technical and non-technical pieces that must be brought together for a successful implementation.
1. Hardware
Hardware or devices are the first components of which most of the stakeholders are aware. According to a survey by CompTiA, 72 of the respondents are familiar with the hardware components in an IoT ecosystem.
IoT Endpoints or Sensors/Actuators
IoT endpoint or sensor is some form of hardware and/or software that runs logic to detect or cause a change in the state of things. For example, it can be a chipset for sensing, connecting, and processing; an actuator for moving or controlling.
IoT endpoints typically generate data about things. The data can be analyzed both at the IoT endpoint or gateway level and at the IoT platform level. Enterprise-oriented IoT endpoints include operational technology assets like manufacturing equipment, jet turbines, and office buildings.
Although most IoT endpoints interact with the IoT hub via IoT gateway, some IoT edge technologies support "mesh computing". Examples are consumer products like smartphones, smart watches, and televisions that interact with each other.
IoT Edge Platforms or Gateways
IoT endpoints are often connected to an IoT gateway, which provides management, control, and transmission of data. IoT gateways intermediate between one or many IoT endpoints. Compared with direct edge-to-cloud approaches, IoT gateways can support increased local IoT device autonomy and IoT device management, as well as scalability, and can manage heterogeneous, multivendor endpoints.
At one extreme, IoT gateways offer all the functional capabilities that are available in the IoT platform hub. At the other extreme, IoT gateways are more limited in scope - perhaps primarily only providing aggregated device connectivity and communications.
2. Software
IoT Platform Hub
By making use of the IoT gateways, data, ingested from endpoints by IoT sensors , is transmitted to a centralized IoT platform hub. The critical roles of an IoT platform hub include IoT device provisioning, management, and control; data analytics, and back-end system integration. Most commonly used IoT platform hubs are cloud-delivered PaaS
IoT endpoints connect directly - or indirectly via IoT gateways - to a centralized IoT platform hub. IoT platform hubs perform numerous key roles, including IoT device provisioning, management, and control, as well as IoT device data ingestion, analysis and back-end system integration. Most IoT platform hubs are cloud-delivered (as PaaS), but some providers make them available as on-premises software (or both). IoT platform hubs generally combine IoT-specific application platform capabilities (for example, IoT device provisioning and communications) with general-purpose application platform capabilities (for example, data persistence, application logic runtime, and analytics).
User Interface (UI)
A user-friendly UI provides a visible and tangible layer where the end-users can simply access the information without putting any extra efforts. These applications should be able to deliver the IoT data in the simplest manner.
3. Existing Enterprise Applications
It is one of the components which is least focused on during the IoT implementation in earlier days. Companies typically focus significant focus on instrumenting their "things" and picking an IoT platform hub to meet IT project requirements. However, they underestimate the degree of impact these projects will have on their existing enterprise applications.
A successful IoT business solution implementation cannot be realized until they are seamlessly integrated with relevant enterprise applications to help improve core business processes. When we say enterprise application, we refer to both the upcoming and existing core business applications (for example, ERP, CRM, MES, BMS), SaaS, mobile applications (used for monitoring and control of instrumented assets), and legacy applications (mainframe or OT technologies) that needs to be incorporated with new IoT technology to get the most benefit out of it.
For example, users must integrate new IoT platform technologies with asset management, procurement & service dispatch applications while implementing new condition-based preventive maintenance capabilities. Seamless integration of IoT technologies with existing enterprise applications is essential for digital business transformation.
Conclusion
The current fragmented ecosystem of IoT standards, devices, and services makes enterprise IoT deployments time consuming and slow. Typically, IoT deployments focus only on a single use case and are incorporated with redundant infrastructure, which lacks security and requires widespread systems integration to interoperate.
Biz4Intellia's strategy is to work with an open IoT ecosystem to make IoT easy to implement, utilize, and scale for all players. Our approach to digital business transformation is through trust-building collaborations and partnerships.
