Figure 1: IoT Ecosystem Perspectives (Poster)

1. Ore — A Vantage Point

The ecosystem of the Internet as we know it now has a fabled history and a very dynamic contemporary present. It sets the stage, both as technical inspiration and misrepresentation of the Internet of Things — the IoT.

IoT, as a fundamental concept, are things — also identified at its most essential physical abstraction — that have been imbued with sensing capabilities. This environment sensing becomes an extension of human and technical computing capabilities with data harvesting functions and the ability to analyse and respond digitally or actuate physically (Miller, 2015, p.22).

When studying, exploring, and managing emerging technologies, we find ourselves within a tug-of-war of changing definitions, perceptions, opinions, and expectations. This has been the case with distant inventions from the past like electricity generation distribution mechanisms, personal mobility through combustion engines or batteries, personal computers, smartphones, smartwatches, and others.

There are various ideas about not only what IoT really is but also when it began. If we will abide by the essential definition in the roadmap of IoT maturity, the IoT started in the 1970s. This was when industry sectors started incorporating electronic instrumentation in infrastructure. As Miller (2016, p.2) reflected quite pragmatically on this, “It isn’t quite as clear cut as you’d think by the name … Yes, the Internet of Things is literally about things connected to the Internet, but it’s both more and less than that.” From several angles, the Internet of Things could be seen as a promotional hype.

With a relatively mature technology and market such as smartphones still changing, we can only expect it to be the same with the IoT. “… like all emerging technologies, the Internet of Things is in the process of defining itself” argues Miller (2016, p.3). Maybe what matters to get started is less about precision but an empirical consistency along coherent lines of elaboration.

It will ultimately be about a myriad of devices, concepts, permutations, and configurations we will build with. This technology, platform, and how we keep things together hopes to give us the net positive effect we always aim to achieve with our innovations which we have not even fully explored with IoT (Burrus, 2014). Through iterations of adoption, we may even reach a point when IoT ‘disappears’ from requiring explicit explanation, as Kuniavsky (2010, p.137) quotes Sharpe’s understanding the pencil becoming transparent and that once “the skill of writing is acquired it feels just like an extension of the hand . . . the goal of transparency is to create such focus through the tool onto the task.”

2. Review

2.1. Metals — Fundamental Technologies

Contemporary representations of technology come with the semblance of stacks (Karzel, Marginean, & Tran, 2016). Other methods exists like networks or tables. One of the reasons stacks have been very useful in software, systems, solutions, and technology architecture is the representation of key aspects of consideration as abstraction layers. While not precisely the case in real, stacks logically provides a natural order of what is fundamental or closer to physical versus that which is digital.

The scientific, technological, and commercial stacks vying to partake in the useful and profitable application of IoT needs to be understood as an architecture or an ecosystem. The interdisciplinary history and nature of paradigm shifts in technology and how it affects businesses, governments, and people are driven by several fundamental forces.

The foundation IoT components are the following, in no order of importance or chronological significance:

Internet
Materials Sciences
Miniaturisation
Sensors
Actuators
Emerging Networking Technologies, Protocols, and Standards
Hyperscale Infrastructure Platform for Data and Application Runtimes

Several of these are very obvious now, especially the Internet as part of the second wave of IT. From a broader business and industrial perspective, the internet enabled ever tighter integration interactions and coordination across different activities for the enterprise. This extended to external suppliers, partners, and channels which allowed closely integrated global supply and distribution chains. Collaboration increased across customer bases across the globe as well (Porter & Heppelmann, 2014). It is critical to note the importance of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol), WWW (World Wide Web), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), and other related internet and web technology stacks. Expectations vary depending on how people differentiate the Internet versus internet as a more generic internetworking concept. (Greenstein, p.50, 2015).

As part of the externalization of product capabilities, hyperscale computing platforms like cloud computing and purpose-built data centres are the foundations of half the smarts of IoT systems. This is sometimes called the Product Cloud as opposed to the Product itself and other cross-functional capabilities like Identity, Data Services, and Security Management (Porter, M. & Heppelmann, J., 2014). The other half of which is both embedded software in things and the network it forms with other things. Externalizing product software effectively and strategically expands product capabilities, differentiation potential, analytical throughput, and increased interaction channels with users like smartphones, smart TVs, and other connectivity-enabled devices.

Perhaps less appreciated are the ever increasing advances in miniaturisation and materials sciences that happen further back in the supply chain. The steady march in this area is aligned with Moore’s Law and Metcalf’s Law: the increasing density in processing enabled by improved capabilities to embed systems on ordinary devices. The richness of network interactions as a consequence of more connected devices proliferate the virtuous cycle of IoT further.

Different authors, industry experts, and literature laud the recent IoT revolution as driven by embedded sensors that extract information from smart devices. But the sensing and connectivity perspective is a limited one. As Miller (2015, p.8-p.9) notes quite nicely, because of the sensor technology embedded in many of these devices, some are calling this next generation of connectivity the “Sensor Revolution.” Arguably more descriptive of reality but does not sound as fluid as word-of-mouth.

The final puzzle pieces extend the system of systems (Porter, M. & Heppelmann, J., 2014) beyond isolated sensing and connectivity with analytical capabilities and actuators that interface digital with physical domains. Chui, Löffler, & Roberts (2010) advised, “Making data the basis for automation and control means converting the data and analysis collected through the Internet of Things into instructions that feed back through the network to actuators that in turn modify processes.” This is a crucial component and capability for IoT: the creation and manifestation of real change in the physical world both through people and with actuators.

2.2. Forge — Fusion Creation

We are all standing on the shoulders of giants with our inventiveness, innovation, and commercialisation. Collective ideas become part of a continuum in progress with technology. Precedents, prior wisdom, and the unjaded, curious, and prepared mind are the driving forces or the conceptual dots that connect for those eureka moments.

When we combine fundamental technologies towards creatively solving problems or aiming for improved status quo, the outcome can be very powerful. But for business, government, and everyday citizens, to harness the benefits of innovations may oftentimes require utilising contrasting approaches.

What emerges from such combination is a picture of an IoT technology stack or solution architecture that represents people, devices, things, connectivity, standards, regulatory considerations, hardware, software, platforms, applications, data, analytics, and physical-digital interfacing as these intersects with various use cases for different key sectors.

2.3. Anvil — Stable Foundations And Standards

During the early days of emerging technologies, standards are in flux. In contrast to common lines of thought around making things ‘smart’, a counter-perspective provides insight that may drive deeper analysis and standards development around The Spectrum of Connectivity, Advanced Protocols, Data Interchange and Interoperability, Security Considerations, and Regulatory Considerations.

Nordrum (2016) noted a suggestion from Schneier, B. who is a security specialist affiliated with Harvard University, “… advocating for minimum security standards, interoperability standards, the ability to issue a software update or patch after a product has hit the market, and even placing code in escrow so that problems can still be managed in case a company goes out of business.”

IoT invalidates notions around precedents and preconceptions regarding the nature of network architecture and theory as daCosta (2013, p.1) argues. As he further elaborates, current network theory, protocols, and implementation have been designed by engineers detached from current and future realities of IoT. “Internet of Things will rely much more upon lessons derived from nature than traditional (and ossified, in my opinion) networking schemes.”

2.4. Hammer — Catalysts For Change

The question of what, how, when, and why transitions occur from initial users and champions to adoption by the mainstream is a web of forces and is uncertain in itself. Like with most anthropological, social, political, industrial, and technological breakthroughs, the path — in hindsight — seems obvious.

Additionally, on one hand, products may have a clear market mandate or need that guides product development, value creation, and value capture. On the other hand, market emerges from products, instead. Kuniavsky (2010, p.171) said it most sublime, “Technologies are created, not discovered. Nor is innovation just identifying unmet needs in a target audience’s life. Despite the popular rhetoric about “discovering” needs, some needs do not exist until a product creates them.”

3. Smiths — A Reflection on IoT’s Future

Prediction is brimful with uncertainty but may benefit from critical sensitivity between deliberate planning and otherwise fortuitous emergence from minimally controlled contexts. The interdisciplinary history and nature of paradigm shifts in technology and how it affects businesses, governments, and people are driven by several fundamental forces.

The frameworks we have planned, adapted, and succeeded with in previous waves that swept businesses, governments, and ordinary citizens remain crucial. Competitive advantage and effective strategy execution to create and capture value are essential guides in pursuing Internet of Things strategies (Porter, 2001).

As more attention is afforded to disruption of old guards by new players, in contrast “… digital transformation … paradigm is not displacement and replacement but connectivity and recombination” (Iansiti & Lakhani, 2014). While continuing to innovate, competitors are collaborating on interoperability standards (Tilley, 2016) and expanding networking capabilities (Landau, 2015). Principal institutions are highlighting often deprioritized considerations like security and reliability (Nordrum, 2016) and exploring IoT for social impact (Lawrence, 2016). Perspectives clash even among experts: where it is all about the “smart” in things (Miller, 2015, p.2); or where the primacy is not of the internet but of the evolving nature of “things” (Porter, M. & Heppelmann, J., 2014); or even about the evolving nature of what constitutes the Internet itself — protocols, standards, and communication dynamics — especially in frontier contexts where the statistically wider number of instrumented but simpler devices reign (daCosta, 2013, p.6).

Perhaps it was said best, when Peters (2016, p.128) quoted Swartz saying as early as 2002, “The future will be made of thousands of small pieces-computers, protocols, programming languages and people — all working together … we need to stop worrying about how to make everyone do the same thing, and instead work on how to connect the (not so) different things that people do together.”

4. References

Miller, M. (2015). The Internet of Things. How Smart TVs, Smart Cars, Smart Homes, and Smart Cities Are Changing The World. USA: Que Publishing.

daCosta, F. (2013). Rethinking the Internet of Things: A Scalable Approach to Connecting Everything. New York: Apress Media.

Greenstein, S. (2015). How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovations, Privatization, And The Birth Of A New Network. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Iansiti, M. & Lakhani, R. (2014). Digital Ubiquity: How Connections, Sensors, and Data Are Revolutionizing Business. Retrieved 15 November, 2016 from https://hbr.org/2014/11/digital-ubiquity-how-connections-sensors-and-data-are-revolutionizing-business

Karzel, D., Marginean, H., & Tran, T. (2016). A Reference Architecture for the Internet of Things. Retrieved 15 November, 2016 from https://www.infoq.com/articles/internet-of-things-reference-architecture

Landau, D. (2015). How 5G will Power the Future Internet of Things. Retrieved 15 November, 2016 from http://iq.intel.com/how-5g-will-power-the-future-internet-of-things/

Lawrence, C. (11 November, 2016). How IoT and citizen science can tackle urban disadvantage. Retrieved 15 November, 2016 from http://readwrite.com/2016/11/11/how-iot-and-citizen-science-can-tackle-urban-disadvantage-cl1/

Burrus, D. (2014). The Internet of Things Is Far Bigger Than Anyone Realizes. Retrieved 15 November, 2016 from https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/11/the-internet-of-things-bigger/

Chui, M., Löffler, M. & Roberts, R. (2010 March). The Internet of Things. Retrieved 15 November, 2016 from http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/the-internet-of-things

Nordrum, A. (10 November, 2016). Wanted: Smart Public Policy for Internet of Things Security. Retrieved 15 November, 2016 from http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/wanted-smart-public-policy-for-internet-of-things-security

Porter, M. (2001). Strategy and the Internet. Retrieved 15, November 2016 from https://hbr.org/2001/03/strategy-and-the-internet

Porter, M. & Heppelmann, J. (2014). How Smart, Connectected Products Are Transforming Competition. Retrieved 15, November 2016 from https://hbr.org/2014/11/how-smart-connected-products-are-transforming-competition

Tilley, A. (2016). Two Major ‘Internet Of Things’ Standards Groups Strike Alliance. Retrieved 15 November, 2016 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/07/27/two-major-internet-of-things-standards-groups-strike-alliance/#7adf1a2a7c01