Integration challenges for Internet of Things (IOT)

Integration has been treated as a kind of old fashioned IT jargon of connecting your old legacy systems with set of other enterprise level applications and services. Most people might be thinking about it as a day in day out kind of thing which you must have but not "Cool" as other stuff like "IOT". Integration solution providers made this a bit "Cool" by providing connectors to most of the web APIs provided by 3rd party companies. 

But the real deal is Internet Of Things. Whether you like it or not, It is here and it is taking over the IT industry. So, what the heck Integration has to do with this new IT jargon of IOT? Well, it has to do everything to make IOT a success. Which means that, there will not be any IOT, without the Integration.

If you are an Integration engineer, you know how hard it is to connect 4 or 5 different systems with each other. But you have done it and you feel much satisfied once you have done that. But the time has come for a greater challenge. Here are the challenged we might face when building the Internet Of Everything (IOE).

1) Greater heterogeneity of vendors and devices - If you think about a simplest of example, mobile phone. You have 1000s of different vendors manufacturing mobile phones. Even though we have few main operating systems, we cannot expect that for the "Things" which might be serving 1000s of different needs of mankind. 

2) Lack of standards in the hardware world - Software industry has been there for some time and it is somehow connected with the invent of Internet and we have been able to come up with standards. But hardware industry is not connected up until IOT came up and there has not been much thinking around standards. Biggest challenge would be to standardized different consumer devices such that they can talk with each other.

3) Limitless possibilities of products - How many consumer electronic devices do you have in your home? I bet that could be around 50. If we take your neighbor, he or she might be having more than 5 devices which you don't have. If we count like this, we might end up numbers rather than devices. So the possibilities are limitless and so as the challenge of integration.

4) No common Alliance or Body - It is true that, all of the big companies are investing billions for building their own IOT solutions. But there is no such common controlling body or an alliance kind of thing at the moment. 

Above are only few challenges we might face in building a real Internet Of Things. Truth to be said, there is no one building the IOT as in the scale of Internet. All big organizations are trying to build their own flavors of the IOT which is only a part of the big picture. We need to think about the big picture and build Integration solutions to cope with these challenges when it comes to building the real IOT. 

So, Integration folks, keep your eyes open and prepare for the greatest challenge you will ever face !!!

What Internet of Things (IOT) means and why we should care?

If you are a person involved in the tech industry for some time, you may have heard the term "IOT" which is an acronym for the "Internet Of Things". It is the most promising technology area or the "Next Big Thing" in the tech industry at least for the next 5 years. Enough said about the hype. Let's talk about what is it and why do we need to care?

What is "Internet"?

First of all, we need to understand what is Internet. According to the most used resource(Google search) in the world we can define Internet as below.

"a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols"

If we take that definition in simple terms, "Internet is a large network of interconnected computers which are connected through standard protocols like HTTP to provide various facilities like information(Google search) and communication(Skype, Viber)". That is not so simple right. Anyway that is it and I think we all understand that.

What are "Things"?

In the context of IOT, "Thing" means a device or accessory which has the following capabilities.

• Sensing (Sensor/Actuator)
• Communication (WiFi)
• Unique Identity (IPV6)

Basically that means any particular item which has the capability to sense and communicate with a unique identification considered as a "Thing". We can make any dumb item a "Thing" in IOT world by adding sensors and transmitters/receivers.

What is "Internet Of Things"?

Now we know about "Internet" and "Things". Which derives that we know about "Internet Of Things" which is the "Network of interconnected "Things" (devices) which are connected through standard protocols (Yet to be identified) to provide facilities like information, wisdom, communication to build a smarter world which consists of Smart homes, Smart cities, Connected cars and improved Health and Safety"

That definition looks Cool right. Being "Cool" does not mean that we should care about that.

Why we should care about "IOT"?

People always wanted to live smart. They wanted to be smart at everything they do. Let's take an example that you are going on a business trip alone by your company vehicle. All of a sudden, some other guy comes speeding and hit your vehicle and you got injured badly. Your life will be under threat if there is no one to help you out. But if you had a smart car which has crash sensor which is connected to your mobile device and when the crash happens, it will check for the nearest hospital and send an automatic message to the ambulance service. This will make sure that you get an ambulance at earliest possible time. Once the ambulance arrived they can extract information related to the accident over bluetooth in few seconds by communicating with the sensor and send those details with your Personal ID and before you are admitted to the hospital, they can assess the situation and prepare all the documentation things done before you are admitted to the hospital. This will save every important second during this process which might have decided your life if these facilities were not there.

That sounds bit "serious" right. That is only an example where IOT will improve our healthcare and safety. There are lot to be told. You can find more information about "Why" by having a look at the below TedEx talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AlcRoqS65E

IOT has already made waves in the tech industry and Gartner suggests that it would become a more mainstream technology area in the upcoming years with 50 billion IOT devices to be available by 2020.