The Internet of Things: Take Your Time

by Dan Kusnetzky,  Virtualization Review

The folks of Liaison Technologies (LT) and I exchanged a number of messages while I was conducting research for an upcoming Virtualization Review article on the Internet of Things (IoT). They believe that enterprises are rushing far too quickly into IoT without giving the move proper thought or consideration.

The following comments come from this lively exchange of ideas:

Dan Kusnetzky: I advocate that enterprises consider what they’re really trying to accomplish before entering the design phase of any project. What’s your view?
LT: In the rush to implement IoT and capitalize on the terabytes of data being made available from devices and smart machines, many companies have overlooked a major component of the process: exactly how will they will integrate and utilize the data?

What are your thoughts on managing the ever-growing herd of intelligent devices that are part of any IoT program?
Devices are popping up everywhere, and it’s easy to collect and store the data, but very difficult to make it meaningful and actionable.

Why? The lack of interoperability, integration and harmonization of Big Data originating from multiple devices and applications is a major obstacle. The number of sources, formats and tools for capturing and analyzing data is growing exponentially, but each device or application creates its own proprietary system. Resulting data silos must be bridged in order to gain a complete picture and real business insight from all the data now available to an organization. Unstructured and semi-structured data each require different systems, and unless a company goes out of its way to develop a polyglot solution, it’s impossible to sync up with current databases.

IoT success requires complex event processing and data streaming in real time; data comes in and you need to be able to react instantly. However, this requires an intricate dance between integration and data management that’s simply not facilitated well by conventional solutions that handle the critical functions of integration and data management separately.

What significant challenges do enterprises face here?
Conventional schema on write systems are also unable to keep pace with the influx of IoT data. Instead, organizations need a schema-on-read approach that enables data to be stored in a central repository, and then accessed and read across virtually any application and in the format required by each particular use case.

The ability to integrate and map various data sources and applications together is critical for companies to take full advantage of the powerful analytics tools and insights available. In order for companies to realize the full promise of IoT and Big Data, they must focus on integrating and managing data from the full gamut of data sources in a single, unified, comprehensive and harmonized platform. ……………

Allowing a growing herd of intelligent devices to access corporate resources appears to open up a huge potential for security problems. What’s your view?
Data security and compliance are also paramount considerations for companies preparing to leverage the IOT. As companies roll out new devices, they must comply with stringent regulatory standards such as HIPAA in the healthcare industry that are related to data capture, use and sharing. A dPaaS solution that unifies both integration and data management in a single, inherently-compliant platform eases the burden and costs of maintaining compliance for organizations.   Read the full article here.