Top 10 technologies for the Internet of Things: what will happen in the next two years?

In January 2016, the notorious Gartner company published a forecast for IoT for 2017-2018. As a matter of fact, since we are talking about the next two years, this is not even a forecast, but our realities. Currently Top 10 IoT Technologies for 2017 and 2018 (G00296351) is available at ComputerWeelkly.com.

I suggest looking at the main ideas of this forecast report. The title picture contains a list of ten core technologies (they could also be called problems) for Gartner's IoT.

1. IoT Security

It seems that everything is clear with information security: the explosive growth in the number of connected devices (20+ billion by 2020) by definition leads to an increase in vulnerabilities.
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However, there are interesting trends in this area for IoT. For example, there is no mention of functional safety (in the sense of safety, and not security). Does this mean that IoT developers and users are not interested in the correct and safe operation of devices for people's health? Most likely, we see the process of safety and security merging into a single meta-property. For IoT, it depends on the implementation of the security functions whether the attacker will have access to the data (classical information security) or to the controlling functions by physical devices (classical functional security). Therefore, functional security is not considered as a separate property, but various types of threats and attacks are considered. At the same time, a significant part of the IoT functions is related to information security, for example, data encryption or authentication.

At the same time, it must be remembered that certain contradictions may exist between safety and security. A classic example: there was a fire in the room, what to do? From the point of view of safety (rescue of people and property) the door to the room should be open, and from the point of view of security (restriction of access to information stored in the room) the door should be closed. How is this contradiction resolved? By setting priorities (for example, people's lives are unconditional value) or by optimizing (for example, what is more valuable, property that can be saved, or information that can fall into the wrong hands and that needs to be protected).

Obviously, in the field of IoT, developers and users will solve the problem of optimizing the risks of compromising data (security) and physical damage (safety).

2. IoT Analytics

The challenges in analyzing IoT data are related to an increase in the volume of data and the need to take into account the real world data in them.

A typical approach in the field of big data, as a rule, is associated with the collection and preservation of data, and only this is done their analysis. In the field of IoT, many data should be analyzed "on the fly" using distributed processing and taking into account the confidentiality of information.

3. IoT Device (Thing) Management

This item is associated with an increase in the dimension of the operated technical systems. Services with a scale of millions of connected devices require new service algorithms. Optimization is expedient from the point of view of the distribution of service services between the cloud and terminal part.

4. Low-Power, Short-Range IoT Networks

Power consumption of devices critically affects the cost of installation and maintenance. Under the network type short range refers to a range of tens and hundreds of meters, that is, it is, first of all, about the wireless technologies that are used by devices. In the proposed solutions, energy is extracted from all possible sources, for example, from stationary wifi transmitters. This raises issues such as interfacing into a single network of various protocols, as well as electromagnetic compatibility.

5. IoT Processors

There are a number of typical functions that must be implemented in calculations for IoT, for example, data encryption, power saving, etc. This leads to the development and implementation of typical computing cores.

In terms of capacity, Gartner predicts the dominance of 8-bit processors until 2021, after which the 32-bit line will win, and 16-bit processors in IoT will never dominate.

6. IoT Operating Systems

The embedded lightweight systems for IoT will continue to evolve. There are already several solutions for which you need only from 5 to 50 kilobytes of memory (for example, Contiki, TinyOS, RIOT, Yottos). The question of optimization is to choose between reducing the use of hardware resources and the opportunities offered by the software development environment.

7. Low-Power Wide-Area Networks

Market requirements for such networks are:

- transfer rate of tens of kilobits per second;
- covering the scale of the country;
- The battery life for devices from 10 years and above;
- the cost of the terminal device (device layer) to $ 5;
- Support for several thousand devices connected to the base station.
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An example of a commercially available solution in this area is the NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT), which is expected to further develop the technology.

8. Event Stream Processing

This problem is closely related to the already considered IoT Analytics in terms of event handling. The technology here is developing towards the creation of DSCP (Distributed Stream Computing Platforms) in the form of a set of distributed computing nodes for event processing, as specific types of big data. Currently on the market are available, for example, Apache Spark, Google Cloud Dataflow, IBM InfoSphere Streams and other technologies.

9. IoT Platforms

Available platforms exist, however, their further development is expected.

10. IoT Standards and Ecosystems

The reference (typical) architecture for IoT (IoT-RA) is in a state of becoming, you can read about it in the article “Architecture Standards for the Internet of Things” .

The problem is the presence of industrial alliances that develop standards in related fields, the requirements of which often overlap and contradict each other (the so-called “war of standards”).

findings

Today, the IoT market is characterized by rapid development and, as a result, immaturity, which is manifested in the rapid emergence (sometimes disappearance) of new players. Portability between platforms is not yet available, and this increases the risks of implementing large-scale solutions.

This situation is typical for technical solutions in the field of platforms, network technologies, operating systems, processor architectures, specialized for IoT. Standardization in the field of IoT also "boils."

From the point of view of human resources in the labor market in the field of IoT, a steady gap between demand and supply is formed. This situation, on the one hand, requires investment by companies in employee training. On the other hand, interested IT specialists can take advantage of this situation when choosing their specialization by investing in themselves.

In the field of scientific research (Research and Development, R & D), the existing challenges allow us to pragmatically form a portfolio of scientific and technical projects, from a large-scale research program to specific areas.

In the field of information and functional security, there is a change of paradigms for which you need to be prepared. Today, in the area of ​​IoT, information security (security) has essentially absorbed functional safety. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that many conceptual provisions (for example, risk assessment, reliability analysis, life cycle management) historically came to security from safety. Therefore, providing security for IoT must include not only the information component, but also the provision of the group of properties of RAMS (Reliability-Availability-Safety-Maintainability), also called Dependability.

In the near future, the formation of a market for certification and licensing of platforms and applications based on IoT, important to safety (safety and security critical), is expected.
Referring to the Top 10 IoT Technologies for 2017 and 2018 (G00296351) report that inspired the article, I want to note that, in my opinion, the structuring of problems for IoT was not done in the best way, because some of the areas (technologies) are quite close to each other. In conclusion, the author’s view on this issue is presented (see Mind Map below).



In fact, there are three basic problems in the field of technology for IoT, between which there are close links:

- ensuring information security (IoT Security);
- scaling of the increasing volume of technical devices and data (IoT Scalability);
- direct development of technologies taking into account the priority requirements for reducing energy consumption (IoT Technical Solutions and Low Power Consumption).

The rest of the private technological areas somehow or other cause a solution to one of the three basic problems.

I consider it important to say that this article is not a direct translation of Top 10 IoT Technologies for 2017 and 2018 (G00296351) , but contains only the main theses of this Gartner report with the author's presentation of thoughts "on the subject." For a more complete picture, of course, it would be useful to look at the source.