By Nagesh Rao
There is a never ending revolution the world is seeing, particularly in the last four decades, when it comes to communication. The internet, which was initially meant for the military’s private data network, has created a revolution in communication and provided a perfect platform for further innovation.
In its early phase, it gave us the platform for email, hosting and browsing information. It provided the next wave of innovation when it gave us the platform for e-commerce and online business. Social media was the recent wave in the internet, which helped connect any one to anyone. And now, we are on the verge of another wave that is called as the Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is heralded as an innovation, which can revolutionize our lives. Systems that were working in silos will now work in a synchronous method. Products that once composed merely of electrical and mechanical components will become complex systems that combine hardware, network of sensors, microprocessors, software, and wireless or IP network. There is tremendous hype and excitement as this new technology trend is poised to connect billions of devices using the internet. Also, the data from devices can be converted to knowledge and intelligence, and then, the system can act on the intelligence with no or least manual intervention.
Gartner, forecasts that 4.9 billion connected things will be in use in 2015, up by 30 percent from 2014, and will reach 25 billion by 2020. Accenture has a prediction of industrial IoT contributing $14.2 trillion by 2030, which is echoed by GE and Cisco. However, it is not the forecast and the numbers, which are exciting, but it is the numerous opportunities this technology is opening up in a wide spectrum as never before that is generating interest in people. Be it tracking one’s freight, monitoring kids at school or on a picnic, or aged parents who are by themselves & far away in a town, or think about a smart city where the all the different modes of transport are linked, IoT can be of great assistance everywhere. Nearby, buses and taxis get an alert when the train is arriving in a local station. Inside the station, the escalator gets switched on automatically and even all the lights switches on in the station along with the display system. With IoT, things which we use to see in a fiction movie is about to become real!
However, with this excitement comes the question: ‘Is the technology ready?’ If so, what are the real concerns, which need to be addressed until we are confident to say that IoT is ready with a no hold barrier?
Infrastructure Working in Silos: An IoT implementation consists of interconnection of hardware, such as sensors and actuators, gateways and IOT servers which are part of software. When all these are put together, it is called as a platform. Though there are several companies, which are coming up with their own platforms, unfortunately, most of the platforms are more of the vertical stack rather than something which can benefit a wide range of consumers and developers working in various different domains. The full benefit of IoT cannot be leveraged until we have data in silos or closed systems. Open platforms need to be in place to allow and create niche applications in different verticals so that experts in different domains need not have to worry about the core IoT technology, but can use their skills to apply their vertical or business knowledge. The open platform need not be restricted to the software, but also the hardware, like having a common sensor network across cities!
No or Various Standards: Having standards are very important for interoperability between networks, sending data across platforms, and to ensure that any device gets connected to any platform without any modification in the software. Also, the standards need to be globally applicable and acceptable.
The problem with IoT is that, as of today there are 15 standards! This creates concern and confusion in an industry that is vast and multifaceted already. We see AllSeen Alliance, Open Interconnect Consortium, Thread Group, Industrial Internet Consortium and the latest entrant, oneM2M, backed by well-known names in the technology sector. Fortunately, all these standard groups and the companies have a common goal - to expedite the growth of IoT. If these groups are not successful in consolidating into one group and ultimately have one standard, it will be left to the “time” to address this problem. As it happened in the wireless industry, the winners of this disparate group will be judged based on the marketing and speed of delivery, along with their technical merit, equally.
Battery Life of the Device: Billions of devices, which were previously unconnected objects, will now be enabled to provide small amounts of data on a regular, perhaps infrequent basis. Unfortunately, all these devices are designed to run on batteries, making the maintenance of these devices not only a costly affair, but a very tedious exercise as well. Prolonged battery life that sources energy from unconventional power sources and a deviation from the standard power management technology than what is used in our embedded system is a must for future development for the Internet of Things. We already see some developments where microcontroller designers are working on ultra-low power devices, featuring extremely-low power hibernation states, capable of operating from very small amounts of energy, measured in nanoamps.
Privacy and Security: From the users’ perspective, the security of personal data is the most important aspect; this includes data that is captured in the public, such as images or behavioural traits or habits. Already, there is much talk about how 'smart' bins were used by over enthusiastic marketing firms to draw out data from the phones of passers-by through Wi-Fi signals without the user even knowing. And, even worse, a popular health tracking device measuring the steps and calories burned along with sleep allowed hackers to find the “nocturnal activities” of the users, apart from their sleep!
While the onus on the privacy issues like these is entirely on the application and its designers, there are other areas where security is of higher importance and needs to be attended to with much diligence. One such area is the data. The data needs to be protected while transmission and at the storage stage. The other area is related to the hardware, and this is something which requires a serious thought.
Though privacy and security is the most talked about topic today, this is something which can be addressed by the golden rule. The good thing is, the basic of internet security is still there and is very much applicable across major areas in IoT. For hardware, we need to ensure that there is no anonymity of the device. Each device connected should have an identity and mechanism in place, wherein unlocking a device risks only that respective device’s data and not any other device’s data in the network.
As Gartner has put IoT in the peak of the hype cycle, it is in the next few years, when technocrats and companies need to put their minds and effort to address all the issues so as to live up to the hype and expectation. This will certainly happen, as it happened with the other innovations in the past. There were hype, there were challenges, then the hype faded, technology got matured, and we all have benefited from it. That is what is going to take place in the sphere of IoT as well.
In its early phase, it gave us the platform for email, hosting and browsing information. It provided the next wave of innovation when it gave us the platform for e-commerce and online business. Social media was the recent wave in the internet, which helped connect any one to anyone. And now, we are on the verge of another wave that is called as the Internet of Things.
Gartner, forecasts that 4.9 billion connected things will be in use in 2015, up by 30 percent from 2014, and will reach 25 billion by 2020. Accenture has a prediction of industrial IoT contributing $14.2 trillion by 2030, which is echoed by GE and Cisco. However, it is not the forecast and the numbers, which are exciting, but it is the numerous opportunities this technology is opening up in a wide spectrum as never before that is generating interest in people. Be it tracking one’s freight, monitoring kids at school or on a picnic, or aged parents who are by themselves & far away in a town, or think about a smart city where the all the different modes of transport are linked, IoT can be of great assistance everywhere. Nearby, buses and taxis get an alert when the train is arriving in a local station. Inside the station, the escalator gets switched on automatically and even all the lights switches on in the station along with the display system. With IoT, things which we use to see in a fiction movie is about to become real!
No or Various Standards: Having standards are very important for interoperability between networks, sending data across platforms, and to ensure that any device gets connected to any platform without any modification in the software. Also, the standards need to be globally applicable and acceptable.
The problem with IoT is that, as of today there are 15 standards! This creates concern and confusion in an industry that is vast and multifaceted already. We see AllSeen Alliance, Open Interconnect Consortium, Thread Group, Industrial Internet Consortium and the latest entrant, oneM2M, backed by well-known names in the technology sector. Fortunately, all these standard groups and the companies have a common goal - to expedite the growth of IoT. If these groups are not successful in consolidating into one group and ultimately have one standard, it will be left to the “time” to address this problem. As it happened in the wireless industry, the winners of this disparate group will be judged based on the marketing and speed of delivery, along with their technical merit, equally.
Privacy and Security: From the users’ perspective, the security of personal data is the most important aspect; this includes data that is captured in the public, such as images or behavioural traits or habits. Already, there is much talk about how 'smart' bins were used by over enthusiastic marketing firms to draw out data from the phones of passers-by through Wi-Fi signals without the user even knowing. And, even worse, a popular health tracking device measuring the steps and calories burned along with sleep allowed hackers to find the “nocturnal activities” of the users, apart from their sleep!
While the onus on the privacy issues like these is entirely on the application and its designers, there are other areas where security is of higher importance and needs to be attended to with much diligence. One such area is the data. The data needs to be protected while transmission and at the storage stage. The other area is related to the hardware, and this is something which requires a serious thought.
Though privacy and security is the most talked about topic today, this is something which can be addressed by the golden rule. The good thing is, the basic of internet security is still there and is very much applicable across major areas in IoT. For hardware, we need to ensure that there is no anonymity of the device. Each device connected should have an identity and mechanism in place, wherein unlocking a device risks only that respective device’s data and not any other device’s data in the network.
As Gartner has put IoT in the peak of the hype cycle, it is in the next few years, when technocrats and companies need to put their minds and effort to address all the issues so as to live up to the hype and expectation. This will certainly happen, as it happened with the other innovations in the past. There were hype, there were challenges, then the hype faded, technology got matured, and we all have benefited from it. That is what is going to take place in the sphere of IoT as well.
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