How to deliver scale for IoT connectivity

HOW TO DELIVER SCALE FOR IoT CONNECTIVITY SPONSORED BY AERIS

INTRODUCTION Solving the growth challenge for smart, connected devices The predictions of there being many millions, if not billions, of devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) by 2020 are soon to be put to the test. In little more than two years, we’ll know just how accurate the analysts and researchers were but, regardless of how many millions of endpoints are connected, it’s clear that there will be growth in the number of connections to an order of magnitude never seen before. Even measured predictions, such as Beecham Research’s estimate that the number of endpoints will grow 20-fold in the 2016 to 2022 period, demonstrate a vast increase in scale.

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And it’s not only the uplift in endpoint numbers that present scaling up challenges for organisations engaging in IoT. Beecham Research also points out that there will be much more data transmitted per endpoint, driven by the need for more and richer data for operational optimisation and the need to generate new services revenue. At the same time, as the market matures, projects will move from being small, localised pilot and trial efforts to global services that operate across national borders and address a worldwide market. These will not be like today’s deployments of a few thousand endpoints in a local area.

Therefore, there’s a need for organisations to change their IoT mindsets in order to prepare for this immense up-scaling. Soon, it will become more normal to connect all assets and devices, wherever they are, rather than the current few exceptions. IoT solutions will move from a tactical nice-to-have to a strategic necessity, and the internal debate will move from being about the cost of IoT solutions to the perceived value increase they can deliver to offset the cost.

The IoT upside is more clearly understood thanks to the trials and testing that have gone on over the last few years, but significant challenges remain to be addressed.

IoT solutions, as confidence in them grows, have become more mission critical for organisations, which now are looking to IoT to underpin their entire businesses.

Think of a manufacturer moving from selling its products to providing the functionality of the products as a service, with IoT enabling continuous monitoring of equipment usage, as well as handling charging data for this new model.

The market for IoT solutions also is becoming more fragmented as different connectivity technologies come to market. In some markets, 2G cellular connectivity is being retired while new low power radio technologies, narrowband offerings, and satellite technologies are all being packaged to support IoT effectively. Cellular options will, of course, remain with 3G, 4G and in the early-2020s, commerciallydeployed 5G. Further serious considerations include the essential requirement for high availability and the growing need for end-to-end IoT security at all levels. Increased automation and easier interoperability with other solutions across the IoT value chain will be prerequisites for scaling up. Additionally, organisations will look to streamline their purchasing by specifying complete solutions, preferring to work with one provider source rather than multiple vendors.

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In order to plan for scale effectively, organisations should recognise that buying what fits their IoT offering today is not the real story, nor is it a viable long-term strategy.

Instead, organisations should be looking ahead to much more widely deployed services with 20 times the endpoints to manage. Organisations need to buy what fits tomorrow’s requirements because changing the system later is costly and disruptive.

However, to plan effectively, organisations need to be clear about the growth prospects of their offerings. A specialised agricultural service has, by its nature, a maximum market size and there’s no value in over-provisioning systems to serve a market size that is unrealistic. Equally, an IoT service that potentially could involve millions of global endpoints needs a connectivity plan that enables such scale to be achieved.

Organisations therefore need to carefully assess the scalability of their connectivity, their processing power, their resources and their budget. All these will need to move in harmony in order to be at the right scale when needed, without wasting money on under-utilised capabilities and capacity.

Plan for scale: define the issues and upgrade capabilities required Many deployments are limited by organisations’ existing internal processes that have been designed for traditional IT or equipment upgrades that pre-date IoT. IoT is a different arena and needs to be approached in specific ways. Organisations need the operational and support processes that promote this new form of growth so as to encourage operational efficiency throughout the process. This, in turn, will empower users, conserve resources and accelerate time to resolution.

Organisations need to accommodate for global expansion at the onset of deployments and choose providers that can support them in all of their potential markets as they grow.

Finally, it’s important to address the supply chain. The more specific the requirements for your devices and modules, the longer the lead time required to deliver them. It’s important to streamline production of equipment by taking advice from the vendor community on what sorts of equipment and services can be deployed rapidly and the likely supply timelines. In addition, consider the time required to install and configure devices. Look to accelerate and simplify deployment by selecting devices that can self-configure and begin operating without human intervention.

Manage the ecosystem in a non-standardised environment The IoT ecosystem is crowded, and lacks industry standards to enable easy integration and interoperability between different devices and systems. This is not likely to change any time soon in spite of the best efforts of standards bodies, such as ETSI, and IoT-specific initiatives, such as oneM2M, across the globe. The standards creation and ratification process involves so many stakeholders and a collegiate approach that it may take many years to finalise. For IoT services, that’s years too many. The urgent need is to get to market quickly and compete in the new market place.

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To achieve this accelerated market entry, organisations should look for partners to help them navigate the non-standardised environment.

Key provider attributes When seeking a technology partner for an IoT deployment, some things to look for include: • Providers should be full stack. Organisations should look for a partner that can supply more solutions that will integrate smoothly with each other.

• Providers should offer technology flexibility. It’s important to make progress now rather than waiting to see which standards win. Waiting could mean missing out on a potential new market, but flexible providers will be able to position you for whichever technology wins out.

• Providers should demonstrate proven results. It still is early days for large-scale IoT markets, so few have had real world success. However, there are some providers that have and are successfully providing their partners with IoT technologies at scale. Those that show success now will only add more experience and expertise as the market matures further.

Reduce time to market The need for speed is vital for success, provided the service can be successfully rolled-out to a large market. One of the major causes of delay is the need to change platforms and technologies between a first launch, which was dimensioned for a small trial, and a next generation solution that can address the mass market. Think about the end game first and select solutions for first launch that can be rapidly extended to address a larger market as the service develops and matures.

A good way to get started is by using off-the-shelf solutions to prove out the business model in a small, trial situation. This can substantially lower the barrier to entry by eliminating development time and costs. If the offering takes off as initially planned then you can upgrade to serve a larger market by turning to an expert provider to support your offering at scale.

Preventing future delays, even at the start of your IoT project, should be a priority.

Ensure the solutions and service you select are easily upgradeable so you can avoid obsolescence and can alter your technologies as the demands placed on your services change.

The Aeris IoT Services Platform In a business environment, IoT scaling is a process with very real challenges. To avoid risks to growth, careful planning, testing and oversight become businesscritical requirements. The process starts with a trusted provider – one who has knowledge and experience.

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Aeris currently has more than ten million devices under management on its network and carries up to one billion IoT messages per day. The company has operational connectivity reach in 190 countries and is on the top ten worldwide in terms of the number of units under management. Aside from the large current installed base, the company employs approximately 250 experts, 50% of which are in engineering and operations.

As the IoT market continues to grow, so too does Aeris’ expertise, as demonstrated in the case studies below: Case study 1: seamless global connectivity for long-haul telematics provider Aeris has deployed its global GSM/HSPA connectivity on a single SIM offering, plus LTE and CDMA service availability on a single platform, for a large, global long-haul telematics provider. In addition, the Aeris solution included a single management platform for all deployments, thereby providing a simplified supply chain, reduced operational costs, and greater connectivity reliability.

These capabilities matched the customer’s specific needs for multiple connectivity technologies to support all of its globally dispersed device deployments, the requirements of complex global supply chains, and its business requirement to reduce device and transmission failure rates.

Case study 2: industrial analytics for a large aircraft manufacturer Aeris IoT data management provided a near real-time Analytics-as-a-Service offering to a large aircraft manufacturer. The manufacturer needed to collect huge amounts of data across thousands of endpoints and assimilate and immediately act on that data according to the thresholds and triggers derived from the data.

Such data typically are collected when a plane lands and plugs into ground systems.

Time delays at this stage are costly and it is unacceptable for a time delay to occur.

Another issue facing the manufacturer was that complex or costly installation of systems into existing planes was not possible given the working uptime requirements of airlines.

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Aeris provided the innovation for large-scale data management in a way that was simple to configure, easy to consume, and tied to an established data model. In addition, the Aeris solution was deployed at a tenth of the cost of alternative solutions.

Case study 3: data management and visualisation for a global heavy equipment manufacturer A heavy equipment OEM customer faced a series of challenges because it required capabilities that no single vendor could provide. The customer wanted a complete solution for global connectivity, data management, visualisation and over-the-air (OTA) firmware update capabilities. However, the company had a patchwork solution that resulted in higher costs, delays in time to market and potential security vulnerabilities.

Aeris provided an end-to-end solution that included global connectivity, data management and analytics. The company now benefits from stronger security because it is able to utilise information across software layers in addition to having a single vendor for three core elements of its global solution.

Conclusion Many challenges still exist for global IoT acceptance. Fragmentation or absence of standards continues to inhibit integration; lack of flexibility hampers efforts to grow in step with demand; and the growing range of technological choices in networks and IT creates confusion.

However, we are starting to see the first signs of significant momentum as endpoint and customer numbers continue to ramp up. This relatively gentle incline on the growth graph is poised to become radically steeper as the market develops to meet analysts’ projections of billions of devices.

This is a journey on a highway in which every lane is the fast lane. The promise of IoT is connectivity of all things but this doesn’t necessarily mean all markets will be large in scale. However, the availability of this connectivity might lead to markets becoming far larger.

The Aeris IoT Services platform is capable of supporting standardised and nonstandardised protocols. We’ve done it before with all the then ‘new’ technologies.

The bottom line for customer choice will come down to cost and coverage and the ability to scale. Proprietary solutions will continue to grow for now, but their limitations are an impediment to long-term growth. So look to an established provider, one who can ‘cover the field’ when it comes to differing technologies.

To learn more about how to prepare for the accelerated pace of scaling up in IoT, watch the recent Aeris/IoT Now webinar at: www.iot-now.com/delivering-scale-iot-connectivity/

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For more information visit: www.aeris.com