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1/06/2020 05:31:00 pm

IoT Platform and Internet of Things Applications

Scalable, Secure IoT Platform on Google Cloud Platform

What is the Internet of Things Platform?

Internet of Things (IoT) connected using the Internet capable of sending the data to the Cloud. The stuff in IoT equipped with different sensors that have their role to interact with the physical object and collect information from that.

IoT Platform

How IoT Platform Works?

The things in IoT equipped with different sensors which role to interact with the physical object and collect information from that. A single device may have fitted with multiple sensors.

IoT devices are configured to push the sensor data to the Cloud where anybody can perform the required transformation and analytics.

Internet of Things Platform Benefits

IoT devices can be used to implement a Smart Home.
IoT devices used for monitoring things in the industrial sector.
IoT can be used to collect data from different devices and generating alerts in case of any threshold.
Intelligence Industries.
In healthcare, IoT can be used to monitor patients remotely and do the needful treatment from the remote location.

Why Adopting the Internet of Things Matters?

The growth in the use of IoT devices is changing the lifestyle, personal health, habits, environment, and industries across different sectors. IoT is enabling to capture the physical data and applying separate analytics on the bases of the collected data. IoT has made life very easy in various fields such as Healthcare, Industrial Sector, Home Automation, Environmental Monitoring, and Retail.

How to Adopt the Internet of Things (IoT)?

IoT plays a different role in each sector; the only common thing is that it enables to connect of the physical devices to the Cloud.

Healthcare System – In Healthcare, IoT can be used to monitor a patient’s heart rate or blood pressure. It can generate an alert to notify the doctor so that the doctor can guide to take immediate decisions. In hospitals, it can also help in Assets Management and configuring or tuning of any device from a remote location.

Industrial – Industrial IoT can be used to monitor the assets in the industrial sector. It can help in implementing Predictive Maintenance to minimize the loss in case of any failure. IoT could help to trigger the alert if any of the machine parts serviced in Real-Time which can be replaced and prevent the massive loss.

Home Automation – There are lots of IoT devices available which used in Home Automation/Security. IoT used for smart monitoring of the home appliances which includes door sensors, cameras, smoke or fire detector, smart electric devices.

Environmental Monitoring – When it comes to monitoring the environment, IoT devices can be used to collect the data in Real-Time from the sensors and that data can be used for forecasting.

Retail – In the Retail sector, IoT can help the retailers to upgrade the stores which can provide a better experience for the customers and also helps in theft prevention and analytics on the based of sales.

Best Practices for Implementing IoT Cloud Platform

The most important thing while deploying an IoT solution is to take care of the security. When everything exposed to the internet, there may be a possibility of a breach into the system which can help the hackers to misuse the devices.

Network Security – First of all, the person/organization that is implementing IoT needs to secure their network on which all the IoT devices connected. Take an example of home automation: when someone has to implement home automation, he should keep the network secret, and he must use proper encryption technic if using a Wi-Fi network and must use appropriate authentication and access control to access the network.

Device Security – Other than the network, device-level security is needed which can prevent unauthorized access to the devices. Select the device manufacturer wisely which provides security patches after an interval.

Data Security – After the network and device everyone must secure the database or data warehouse where they are storing their data, collected from IoT devices.

Top IoT Cloud Platform and Tools

Ingestion Tools

Apache MiNiFi – Apache MiNiFi is the sub-project of Apache NiFi which can be used to collect data from IoT devices. Apache MiNiFi is of very size and capability to run on small devices that consume meager resources.

StreamSets Data Collector Edge – SDC edge is a very lightweight agent that is capable of collecting the data from its source of creation.

IoT Cloud Platform Solutions

AWS IoT Core

AWS IoT Core is a managed Cloud platform by AWS which enables the secure connection between different connected devices(sensor) and multiple Cloud services. AWS IoT Core enables to handle billions of devices and trillion of messages. It also helps to route those messages to different AWS Cloud services and allows the building of analytics and machine learning models.

Google Cloud IoT core

Cloud IoT Core is the managed service of Google which allows as to quickly and securely connect, control and ingest data from millions of IoT devices. It also enables to communicate with other Google Cloud Service for collecting, processing, analyzing and visualizing the data. Cloud IoT Core is a serverless service that automatically scales in response to Real-Time events. It supports both HTTP and MQTT protocols of the communication with the IoT devices.

Azure IoT Hub

In Azure, IoT Hub acts as the central unit which allows connecting, monitor and manages millions of devices using bi-directional messaging. It supports AMQP, MQTT, HTTP protocols for the communication with the IoT devices. It also helps there own protocol gateway Azure IoT Protocol Gateway in case a device doesn’t support AMQP, MQTT, HTTP.

Concluding the Internet of Things Platform and Use Cases

The Internet of things is a trending keyword in the field of technology. The Internet of Things is actually a pretty simple concept, it means taking all the things in the world and connecting them to the internet. Hence, in the fast-moving pace of digitization, enterprises are investing a lot of time and effort to dive into this wave ranging from industry to industry. For industry-specific case studies and use cases of IoT, click below to know more:

Learn more about Solutions for building ”IoT Based Smart Meters“
Explore our use case for “Smart Farming Solutions“
Read our use case based on IoT Solutions for “Smart Manufacturing“

Overview of ONAP Architecture and Best Practices

What is ONAP?

It’s a project under the governance of the Linux Foundation and founded by AT&T and China Mobile. ONAP stands for Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) is an initiative created by the combination of the ECOMP and Open-O projects into ONAP, to bring the capabilities for designing, creating, orchestrating and handling of the full lifecycle management of VNF (Virtual Network Functions) or Network functions virtualization (NFV), SDN (Software Defined Networks), and the services that all of these things require.

Note – The primary goal of ONAP is to implement the capabilities needed for orchestration and handling of the full lifecycle management of VNF deployments.

ONAP is the platform that works above the infrastructure layer to automate the network. ONAP allows end-users to connect products and services through the infrastructure. It allows deployments of VNFs and scaling of the network, in a fully automated manner. The high-level architecture of ONAP consists of different software subsystems that broadly divided into a design-time environment, and execution time environment to execute what the designed platforms.

ONAP community defines blueprints for various use cases during each release, which can be adopted by the users immediately. Some essential uses cases are –

5G
CCVPN
VoLTE
vCPE

ONAP will bring the next revolution in the field of networking. ONAP stands for an open network automation platform and manages the virtually defined networks. What is the VNF or what’s the big deal about this Virtual Networking?
VNF – Network functions virtualization is a network architecture concept that uses the technologies of IT virtualization to virtualize entire classes of network node functions into building blocks that may connect, or chain together, to create communication services. – Wikipedia.

Why VNF or SDN required?

There are lots of reasons (like vendor issues, complex control panel) to move to virtualization or software-defined architecture.
All the hardware network devices have data planes (describe where data forwarded done through network addressing) and control plane the complex one(its work as a decision-maker and control where should traffic be sent and how quickly).
Control panel is not as simple as network architecture have multiple devices type then have multiple control plane one for each, which results in multiple decision-makers in your n/w which become very complex even at typical network configuration that has a router paired with a firewall device plus a WAN acceleration device.
To solve these issues and reduce the complexity there comes software-defined or virtual networking, that abstracts the data plane and control plane. The NVF converts the single hardware task to the virtual machine or software-defined which does the same work done by hardware devices but in more Agile and adaptive ways. It’s a software application used in Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) that has defined interfaces and provides well-defined networking functions components; the components can be one or more, for example, a security VNF has a function related to NAT and Firewall.
But VNF too has various challenges like Vendor Compatibility and many others, it enables VNF ( Virtual Network Functions), and other network functions and services easily understandable in an automated, policy-driven Real-Time environment. This provides everyone the ability to fully create, design and deploy for Automated Network Services.

How ONAP Works?

ONAP is the result of many software subsystems combined, these subsystems broadly divided into two major architectural framework parts –
Design-time framework – It defines, designs and programs the platform. Again design-time framework consists of the following subsystems –
Service Design and Creation (SDC) – It defines, simulates, and certifies assets and their associated processes and policies.
Policy – It enables the creation and deployment of rules to instantiate conditions, requirements, constraints, attributes, or needs regarding the assets provisioned, maintained, or enforced.
Run-time framework – To execute the programmed logic defined in the design phase. It also consists of following subsystems –