Hurdles On The IoT Highway

Overcoming the hurdles on the way can help realize the benefits that Internet of Things (IoT) promises

IoT holds immense potential to add value to human life, but it must overcome the following challenges before its potential can be fully realized. Storage: Internet of Things generates massive amounts of data which presents organizations with a challenge in terms of storage and management of this voluminous data. To handle ever-increasing volumes of data traffic, there will be a massive need for bandwidth. IDC expects workload demands from Internet of Things to increase 750% by 2019! Therefore, organizations will need to adopt edge-based data processing.

Infrastructure: Another big obstacle on the road to Internet of Things is the infrastructure. To build an Internet of Things infrastructure that is efficient, reliable, scalable, and secure, enormous investments and planning effort is required. To make matters even more challenging, every use case requires a tailor-made Internet of Things infrastructure. Since no single standard technology can suffice, the choice of technology varies according to the specific IoT use case.

Connectivity: Connectivity forms the backbone for any Internet of Things infrastructure. In terms of capacity/scalability and the coverage they provide, Internet of Things wireless technologies such as WiFi can be useful. There are certain topologies, however, where it can be impossible to deploy WiFi. In such cases, broadband cellular connectivity through 3G or 4G LTE can be explored.

In order to meet the diverse needs of varied Internet of Things use cases, several cellular Internet of Things technologies are currently being standardized. These include Extended Coverage-GSM-IoT (ECGSM IoT), Cat-M1 and Narrow Band-IoT (NB-IoT). The introduction of 5G will likely spur the transformation across industries, which will give rise to newer use cases in automation, Internet of Things and big data.

Compatibility: Internet of Things faces technical issues such as lack of an industry-standard when it comes to IoT infrastructure and compatibility with other business systems. A Cisco research has gone on to say that “coordination via common architecture or a consistent security strategy is all but absent, and vendor product and service selection remains largely ad hoc, based upon the device provider’s alliances with partners or the core system that the devices are enhancing or replacing.” That said, efforts are on to establish common Internet of Things standards such that diverse IoT components can become compatible with each other.