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Tag: IoT development

  • How Open Source Software Is Defining the Future of Mobile Connectivity

    How Open Source Software Is Defining the Future of Mobile Connectivity

    Mobile operators face intense pressure to deliver more data, faster connectivity, better coverage and more functionality to end users who are (unfortunately) more demanding than ever. Increasingly, these end users will not be people as we know them but rather Internet of Things (IoT) devices. IDC has projected that by 2025, 60% of the world’s data will be generated by enterprises, double its level in 2017, largely due to the growth in connected devices, sensors, automation and related equipment.

    To address industrial automation, connected cars, smart cities, sensor networks, asset management, connected health and more, operators need to rethink how the connecting network is architected. They must support faster connections, greater density and dramatically reduced latency. And they must add this functionality and flexibility while driving down the costs of deploying, sustaining and managing the network infrastructure.

    For decades, the telecom industry has been dominated by proprietary business and operating models, but with market pressures to find innovative ways forward, operators must find a new approach. That means embracing the open-source principles and innovations that took the computer industry at large from supercomputing to smartwatches and wearables and applying them to wireless network infrastructure.

    Open source software is proving to be key in 5G and IoT development, powering the automation of the mission-critical functions required to support the high speeds and low latency of 5G and the huge number of endpoints in IoT. Stakeholders have recognized that commoditization and democratization of wireless network infrastructure is necessary to stay relevant.

    Several initiatives already are underway to break this proprietary stranglehold and deliver software-defined networking (SDN) into the wireless network. They include the major operators and wireless infrastructure vendors, while disruptive challengers and startups are making an impact, too.

    The operator community along with major enterprises are now actively engaged in collaborative alliances to help drive uptake of open source.

    The O-RAN Alliance includes members such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Intel, Verizon and SK Telecom, and embraces open interfaces and intelligent technologies for the radio access networks (RAN) needed for next-generation mobile applications like augmented reality, IoT, connected cars, smart homes and more.

    The Open vRAN initiative is backed by Cisco and is primarily focused on specifications to enable “unbundling the components of the network into smaller, simpler components and virtualizing capability to reduce cost and increase agility.”

    The Telecom Infrastructure Project’s OpenRAN Group, created in 2016 by Facebook, Intel, Nokia, Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom, is focusing on more simplified and efficient radio access network technologies based on vendor-neutral hardware and software-defined approaches.

    A key component and enabler of a programmable base station is providing for a software-defined radio, which can revolutionize the traditional RAN landscape and make it easier for operators to roll out tailored services to different customer segments, at a reduced cost, by using software rather than hardware to process radio signals.

    To that end, the MyriadRF open source initiative was founded by Lime Micro in 2012 with the goal of democratizing wireless innovation. It has grown to include contributors ranging from hobbyists and wireless enthusiasts to professional engineers and equipment manufacturers. As of late 2018, more than 8,000 high performance LimeSDR software-defined radio boards had been shipped to developers, with more than 4,000 commits made across 70 GitHub repositories.

    LimeNet’s CrowdCell network-in-a-box platform, which significantly lowers the barrier to entry for software-defined radio development, is opening up a portfolio of new use cases for operators and enables them to go much further than being just a connectivity provider. Furthermore, it has the added benefit of access to a developer community which is constantly creating new applications and modifying and testing existing ones for increased use case fit.

    For example, Vodafone in the UK wanted to extend coverage and add additional services to the network it offers to customers and use this as a means to generate new revenue. By using CrowdCell, Vodafone is able to localize communication to a greater extent and reduce reliance on major cloud service providers–meaning Vodafone gets greater reliability and security at a lower cost.

    They also have the opportunity to develop cloud-hosting revenues and additional services, from which new revenue can enable 5G development and deployment. All this is underpinned by safe access to the app development community that ensures continuous innovation.

    The future of mobile connectivity is software-defined. The software-defined approach and third-party app development will ensure that operators are no longer differentiated solely by coverage or subscription costs but by the value-added services they are able to offer.

    — Tom Canning

  • Building a Services and IoT Platform with DevOps, Part 4

    Building a Services and IoT Platform with DevOps, Part 4

    IoT platforms and their solution development have crossed different maturity levels. At first, devices were primitive, isolated and working with limited functions before slowly evolving to communicate and connect with other devices using lightweight communication protocols, and then stepping into advanced level with remote management of devices, harvesting the data from devices and smart decisioning and analytics. Beyond that, IoT has moved to optimized levels of using multiple technology options and adopting cloud and DevOps disciplines to build intelligent IoT solutions.

    This article focuses on giving insights on choice for IoT platforms and factors influencing build or buy options for IoT solutions, different hosting options, factors on IoT development in the cloud and more.

    IoT Platforms: Build, Buy or Both?

    The dilemma of whether to build an IoT system from scratch or buy an off-the-shelf platform still continues. Below are some of the key factors to consider before making the critical decision.

    1. Price: If you plan to build an IoT platform, the infrastructure setup and operation costs can be high. And, as you plan to scale, there will be additional infrastructure cost in setting up additional data centers in that region. If you buy an IoT platform, prebuilt infrastructure is available across global data centers to scale out on a per-usage basis. Plus, you get the the benefit of buying devices from a certified partner ecosystem with discounted device prices. You can buy a few devices from cloud vendors or other device manufacturers, and use mix of devices, mix of cloud/multi-clouds or on-premises, using mix of platform as a service (PaaS)/infrastructure as a service (IaaS) at competitive prices.
    2. Time to Market: A house-built IoT systems will typically take about six to 12 months to complete, including infrastructure setup, device development and software development and testing. Depending on the complexity of the business case, the release cycle may take even more time to get to production, especially with ongoing device technology updates, lack of protocol standards and new business demands.
      Under the buy option, you can buy preconfigured end-to-end solutions available for common IoT use cases such as remote monitoring, predictive maintenance and connected factory, and these solutions can be customized based on need. You can even try to build only few components of IoT solution which may not be available from the vendor, such as the devices/edge, build a field gateway and use preconfigured solutions for data ingestion and data processing, data analytics and data storage components. There are starter kits available to quickly prototype, evaluate and deploy, eliminating spending more cost and effort, before hitting to the ground.
    3. Skillset/Expertise: Building an IoT platform requires a skilled team with expert knowledge of software and hardware and development, which costs more. Currently there is lack of skilled IoT experts with a mix of software and hardware knowledge in traditional industrial-based enterprises.
      When buying a IoT solution from vendors, the solutions are prebuilt and guided by standards and best practices. The platforms are built by experts who are proven with cloud infrastructure, based on their experience working with large customer base and customer support—necessary for IoT platform development.
    4. Scalability: When you plan to scale your business, you need to scale your infrastructure as well. With millions of devices connecting to your infrastructure to send and receive data and firmware updates, monitor the devices, support multiple range of network providers and store large volumes of data being collected and processed, you need a scalable infrastructure on-premises or in the cloud to meet those demands. Setting up a scalable infrastructure on your own requires skilled labor, effort and cost.
      Real-time streaming and data processing capability is available for large volumes of data workload, enabling scaling of individual components of IoT solution, as well scaling as scale units (group of components for data ingestion, data processing and data storage). Choices of different cloud vendors give you options to scale based on demand, horizontally or vertically, adding/removing devices with portability options and providing on-demand simulated test environments with the flexibility to choose multiple clouds or a mix of PaaS/IaaS options from different clouds or hybrid infrastructure.
    5. Security: For in-house IoT development, teams should be aware of various security attacks and develop systems with current security strategies and technologies to both protect data and devices and maintain data privacy. A large infrastructure is needed to support the sandboxed hosting of data in separate geographic regions for secure data storage, device security and user security.
      IoT platform vendors provide security standards. For example, Microsoft provides SDL (Security Development Lifecycle), which enables developers to follow the standards during device development and ensures development happens with security built at all parts of system. These platform providers have prebuilt infrastructure for secure data storage, cloud security, user security, application security and device security, and has separate security teams to protect the data at all levels.
    6. Analysis & Visualization: It’s estimated that 90 percent of the large volumes of data collected from millions of devices remains unused in most enterprises. To tap the data for valuable business metrics, data analysis/algorithms should be updated as industry and device requirements change and extensions are needed to integrate data with data analysis tools to churn the data. There are open-source and proprietary tools available for data mining and data analytics and custom dashboards must be built to monitor the telemetry, setup rules and actions.
      Preconfigured solutions and most IoT platform providers have out-of-box data analysis tools integrated and rules can be defined to analyze data with customizable dashboards, enabling you to focus more on business outcomes and how to churn/mine data, rather than focusing on building algorithms/tools/dashboards from the scratch.

    Factors Driving Cloud-based IoT Development

    Considering the various factors, a hybrid option with mix of buy and build for IoT platform components is better compared to building the platform from scratch, as you get out-of-the-box features from the off-the-shelf platforms that are customizable and extensible to business needs.

    The following are some of the factors driving more and more IoT development in cloud (single/multi-cloud/hybrid), making IoT grow exponentially:

    1. Increasing number of devices – billions/trillions of devices interconnected
    2. Need for remote processing power and high compute
    3. Need for hyperscale systems for processing hot/cold/warm/fast data pipeline with low latency
    4. Need a platform that can quickly evaluate, prototype and deploy IoT applications
    5. Need a platform that provides security by design across devices, gateways, networks, data processing, users and applications
    6. Usage of advanced analytics and monitoring solutions available in cloud
    7. Leverage interdevice communications, interservice communications
    8. Utilize preconfigured IoT solutions for most of the popular use cases such as remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, with proven practices/patterns.
    9. High data storage, highly scalable with minimum cost to deploy
    10. QoS features in cloud—security, performance, usability, backup, etc.
    11. Cloud gateway providers have support for various devices and provides extensibility
    12. Cost of devices, cost to deploy and internet usage has dropped
    13. Out-of-box support and availability of big data and machine learning techniques in the cloud with mobile data visualization
    14. Ease of integration with DevOps tools in cloud, end-to-end testing with simulated devices as containerized environments in cloud

    Expanded internet connectivity, reduced cost of devices, increased spread adoption of remote devices such as smartphones, usage of big data, machine learning techniques and cloud adoption, competitive pricing models and more are the key drivers for IoT’s growth in cloud.

    About the Author / Lavanya Subbarayalu

    Lavanya Subbarayalu is Senior Architect working with Technology Office in HCL Technologies. She has expertise in IOT, Azure, DevOps consulting & Microsoft technologies. She is associated with DevOps COE, working on design and Development of DevOps solutions and consulting tools. Connect with her on LinkedIn.