Conquer IoT Complexity

Amit Marwah

By Invitation Amit Marwah

Today smartphones and tablets are everywhere and social networking apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat are booming. In the next phase, everyday objects will connect and become part of information systems and end-user applications. Our daily lives will change as machines and humans interact to make our society safer, greener and healthier. Connected wearables and telemedicine will help improve people’s health, homes will be safer and there will be fewer road fatalities.

This convergence of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, big data analytics and the growth in connected devices is enabling a highly connected world known as the Internet of Things (IoT). The coming decades will be characterized by billions of smart devices, trillions of dollars in economic growth and cost savings and exabytes of sensor-generated data. In this environment, the IoT is emerging as an unprecedented business opportunity for many players in the telecoms, IT and consumer electronics industries.

The worldwide Internet of Things (IoT) market is expected to be a USD 328 billion market by 2020. The IoT market in India is poised to reach USD 15 billion by 2020 accounting for nearly 5 percent of the total global market. Indian government has committed over USD 1 billion investment in building 100 smart cities every year for next 5 years. With nearly 120 firms offering solutions in the IoT segment, there are tremendous opportunities for further growth. Approximately 70% of IOT start-ups have emerged since 2010. Primary factors driving Indian firms to deploy IoT are:

• Instant & real time decision making
• Rise of big data analytics
• Increasing smart phone and mobile internet penetration
• Changing lifestyles of the consumer becoming more tech savvy
• Need for maintaining a secure and safe working environment to avoid cyber threats
• Cost effectiveness and high ROI

One of the key initiatives of the Indian government is to build smart cities across the country. Major aspects of a smart city government is focusing on are:

• Smart parking
• Intelligent transport system
• Tele-care
• Woman Safety
• Smart grids
• Smart urban lighting
• Waste management
• Smart city maintenance
• Digital-signage
• Water Management

 Strategy to create better opportunities in IoT

IoT has a transformational impact on all sectors because it is fundamentally changing products, business models, processes and customer interaction. Nokia’s 3-layer approach towards a Programmable World is helping organizations to become more efficient, agile and real-time.

1. Connectivity: Scalability, coverage, availability, latency, interoperability, and security are key requirements for IoT connectivity and some of the solutions to address this are

• Mobile networks will support standard cellular protocols (EC-GSM, NB-IOT, eMTC,) as well as Wi-Fi, LoRa and MuLTEfire, while LTE enables mission critical public safety and first responder services.
• A mobile core which is IoT optimized to help reduce signalling traffic, optimizing resources, and reducing power consumption, enabling operators to offer SLA-based connectivity.
• Although most IoT access will be wireless, fixed networks remains a strategic asset for our customers. For example, much of the IoT will be part of the digital home and FTTx networks and CPE will be needed to deliver bandwidth and QoS for backhauling, and help service providers realize the connected home.

2. Platform: A horizontal IoT platform is needed to support a broad range of vertical applications, to streamline operations and reduce costs, and to securely mix and match devices and applications.
3. Applications: All over the world lead healthier, happier and more productive lives.

Focus Areas

We believe that technology where everybody and everything is connected can be exciting, but also alienating. Based upon analysis of the IoT market, telecommunications players should focus on five key vertical areas:

• Connected automotive: Low-latency, highly scalable and secure communications are key for remotely managed cars and autonomous vehicles and supporting track & trace, fleet management, and vehicle2x applications.
• Connected utilities: Utilities require a highly efficient, safe and secure city infrastructure powered by network solutions, a shareable, adaptive platform and a robust applications ecosystem.
• Connected cities: A holistic smart city framework should target the best use of urban data to expand the human possibility for economic competitiveness, environmental sustainability and general liveability, meeting the needs of present and future generations. It should aim at a wide variety of opportunities, ranging from connected street furniture, to smart parking, to real-time traffic/crowd monitoring.
• Connected safety: Communication networks, IoT technologies, and video analytics applications can significantly improve the comfort and safety of people, vehicles and assets in private and public places, and improve the efficiency of first responder and surveillance services.
• Connected health and home: Smart networks and devices, with preventive and remote care applications, will help people to lead healthier, happier and more productive lives.

 Conquering complexity

A layered standards-based approach to architecture, provides flexibility for the operator to choose the deployment option that works for them. Further, compared to vertical point solutions, a horizontal IoT platform is a key asset to support a broad range of vertical applications, to streamline operations and reduce costs, and to securely mix and match IoT devices and applications.

Platform, such as Nokia’s IMPACT, will play a vital role that can provide a horizontal end-to-end framework, integrating home-grown and best of breed 3^rd party components for:

• Connectivity Management: Helping operators manage the rapidly growing number of connections from millions of sensors and devices, and automate the business processes between the operator and enterprises. Typical CMP functions are multi-tenant SIM card and eSIM management through VPN configuration, including subscription, provisioning, rate plans, charging, and enterprise management services.
• Device Management: Enabling remote provisioning, device activation/deactivation, configuration, over-the-air OS, firmware and software updates, and device troubleshooting. With the IMPACT platform, Nokia is extending its top position in device management, with more than 700 million devices managed worldwide, into the IoT space (through e.g. support of the LWM2M protocol). The platform offer is complemented by our Device Management Certification Program that handles interoperability testing and device certification.
• Data Collection and Management: Providing business-relevant device and network data collection, data and event stream filtering/processing, and trend-prediction to application dashboards and external back-end systems.
• Application Enablement: Exposes the IoT network and its connected devices to application developers to speed up service and application creation, and hosts application development and execution capabilities, in the cloud and distributed via Mobile Edge Computing.
• Security Management: A comprehensive approach to IoT security, through device certification and encryption, and by analysing traffic patterns and profiling devices for malware and anomalies.

Towards connected world

Despite all the challenges and growth pains IoT will still face, it can enhance the quality of life, give more time back to the people, bring economic growth, and overall make the world a better place.

The author of this article, Amit Marwah is Head of End-to-End Sales Solutioning, Nokia India