Like Big Data, Internet of Things (or IoT for short) has been talked about for years, and seems on the verge of making it big the next 1-36 months or so. Just as real-life management intelligence and business value from Big Data logging and analytics.
Just as Big Data solutions and systems has to deal with tons of different/proprietary log formats and data sources within an enterprise or from public data sources on the Internet or other places, then applying application or vendor specific data collection and log normalisation, and doing application specific mapping to business KPIs, reports and analytics, so IoT faces a number of non-standardized or vendor-proprietary challenges to become a true interconnected web of things, things to humans, humans to things etc.
There are numerous non-standardised issues and management in the areas of IoT security (service access to things by other things and humans, authentication and authorisation, management and reporting of denial of service and hi-jacking of devices, device upgrades, logging), identification and naming schemas for things, common IoT metrics, real-time control and communication protocols, subscription models and reporting.
A recent IETF Internet report draft, "
Security Considerations in the IP-based Internet of Things, draft-garcia-core-security-06") seemingly puts a lot of faith in IPv6 and web services in general to facilitate IoT developments ("The introduction of IPv6 and web services as fundamental building blocks for IoT applications [RFC6568] promises to bring a number of basic advantages including: (i) a homogeneous protocol ecosystem that allows simple integration with Internet hosts; (ii) simplified development of very different appliances; (iii) an unified interface for applications, removing the need for application-level proxies."), but also adds "Although the security needs are well-recognized, it is still not fully clear how existing IP-based security protocols can be applied to this new setting".
On a general level this is of course quite all right but of one looks at the developments of for instance, and quite relevant, mobile ecosystems where some key players control their entire ecosystem (clients and device OS, programming APIs and SDKs, backend for authentication and billing, app stores, ad networks integration etc), homogeneous protocol ecosystem for IoT and unified interface for IoT devices, clients and services, looks a long way of. And so far, in my opinion, most IoT devices and services for home automation and IoT, in-car or transport IoT, M2M payment arrangements and more are proprietary and vendor specific.
For instance for home automation, it's not easy or doable at all to get
Belkin WeMo units to talk to or interact with
Nest units or
Telldus units. Or reach them through a common programming interface or backend. (although I should backtrack slightly here - the great IFTTT scripting service is starting to emerge as a common way for end-users to program their devices, and is supported bu Belkin WeMo and Philips for their
Hue range for instance).
With that backgrounder, are there risks of IoT being balkanized, and that IoT devices and services will become vendor or ecosystem proprietary? Or are there standardisation efforts underway to overcome this risk and 2-3 vendors dominating this field over time as we have seen in the mobile area, Internet video or social media area for instance.
Currently the IETF doesn't seem to have a RFC track for IoT comms and networking standards, but the IEEE standards organization are now finally are gearing up (or, they had their first
IoT report out in 2005), and are
meeting for their initial IoT standardisation tracks. Will probably take some years and in the meantime it's not hard to predict that this developing and promising business area will see most gadget, cloud and Internet OTT players getting involved (why not Facebook for home automation and control, Microsoft Xbox with Kinect for same and as automation hub, Android and Google Glass for an Google approach, Apple TV or iOS-devices for same etc).
And getting involved here means each vendor building and securing their IoT ecosystem on both client and backend/cloud side, extending device OS (iOS, Android) to cover IoT functionality and attract developers and påartners into their IoT ecosystem. I would put my own money on one or two of this, even though it means IoT balkanisation.
Looking to read up on IoT developments and work? Here are some pointers and vendor samples (in no particular order):
- Wikipedia on IoT
- McKinsey Quarterly report, The Internet of Things
- Dark reading, Identity management in the cloud by Ericka Chickowski
- IFTTT. And an article on how to get started with IFTTT from ReadWrite
- OpenIoT - Open Source Solution for the Internet of Things into the Cloud
- CastleOS for home automation
- You are most likely a IoT service provider - Google Maps gets real-time traffic, crowdsources Android GPS data
- Postscapes - tracking the Internet of Things
- IoT cloud specialist - Arrayent
- IoT developments environment and tools, IoT cloud - Xively
- Device relationship and ID management - Forgerock IRM
BTW, what are the
Balkans and
Balkanisation?
Erik Jensen, 14.11.2013
