Introduction to Internet of Things

Introduction

IoT stands for Internet of Things. As per the IEEE ( IEEE, ”Internet of Things” , 2014) Internet of Things is defined as “A network of items embedded with sensors which are connected to the internet”,

The usual internet we all know is a network of networks which comprise of computers, servers and many networks. For example when you access Youtube.com you access through your computer and retrieve data from another server which again a computer via the network. With the advancement of computer networks many device are connected to this internet. For example now your ,Tab, home thermostat, cameras and other devices & appliances are connected to the internet. These connected devices through the internet creates a broader network of computers and devices is now capable of transferring data between devices through the network even without human interaction. This is called the Internet of Things. This can be a small device as small as a pill or can be big as an aero plane. If you take a GPS tracker on a vehicle, you can monitor the vehicle in real time. Now you can check your home security camera feed from your phone. Another classic example is the Smart home concept of connected smart devices that can be used for home automation. This larger network of devices and appliances collectively as a network is called the internet of Things. Internet of things will be a dominant force in the industries in future. It is predicted that about 50 Billion devices will be connected to internet by end of 2020. Those will generate 4.4 zettabytes of data. IoT industry will grow to a 14.4 Billion dollar industry by 2025.

Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is the name given for the next technical revolution that will take place with the increasing blend of smart technologies with transitional or legacy industries. Some of the key aspects of this will be increased automation, speed and accurate communication, efficient real time monitoring and machines which can communicate without human interaction. Internet of Things or IoT will play a major role in this technology transformation because massive scale machine to machine communication is the concept behind IoT. The other technologies like robotics, Artificial Intelligence(AI), Machine Learning(ML) will also be a quintessential part of this technical revolution.

The increase of automation and self-monitoring machines is in industries has already begun reducing human workforce in manufacturing related industries.

The replacement of human involvement in industries will urge to direct the human work force to find more creative solutions and innovations for problems human kind face in becoming more efficient with supplies to the growing population and demand throughout the world. This is why the most required skills in industry 4.0 would be creativity and innovation.

Use cases

There are many applications of IoT we can already see in the environment.

Smart Home

One of the most popular applications of IoT is the smart home automation systems. Smart home concept is developed with many connected devices installed in a house to create greater convenience. Some of the features can be listed as below.

• Smart TVs that can be connected to the internet and works with voice recognition or gesture control. Any popular brand of TVs now has smart TVs.
• Smart lighting with automated operation with the condition of ambient light and remote controlling from outside the house. Example: Phillips Hue bulbs
• Smart thermostats to monitor and control home temperature. Example: Nest thermostat
• Smart door Locks to detect , authenticate and access control home users and selected visitors.
• Smart security cameras with remote monitoring and motions sensing.
• Pet care systems to automatically feeding and remote monitoring of pets.
• Home gardening systems with smart irrigation and health parameter monitoring.
• Smart home appliances such as coffee makers, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines etc.

Smart Grids

The electrical power grids are another areas where the IoT technologies are disrupting around the globe. The IoT technology will optimize the operation of generation, distribution and consumption of electrical power in the grid. This will be done using a combination of smart meters, smart appliances and energy source management. The Smart grid will have the below features.

• Smart metering with each electricity consumption is measured in real time using remote monitoring enabled meters. This data also used to correctly identify the demand patterns.
• Smart appliances will consume the energy more efficiently and can be programmed to match the demand profile of the grid.
• Power generation and distribution can also be automated in response to the demand on real time with the inputs of the massive IoT network. This will be used to load balance the network specially due to a high number of independent renewable energy sources.
• Smart grids can be used to analyze and create better cost structures

Industrial IoT (IIoT)

The increase of nodes in industries which can communicate will be used for automations and monitoring reducing the human interaction of human work force in future industries. This transformation of industries with IoT is called the Industrial Internet of Things. Mainly the nodes in an IIoT environment will be acting as sensor nodes collecting data and the processed data through edge computing devices or cloud applications will be used for automations and monitoring dashboards.

Monitoring Applications

A simple application of IoT can be used for a temperature monitoring application. For example the temperature at a given location or a space would be a key measurement in certain applications such a agriculture and commercial storages. In these applications a temperature sensor which can be connected to the internet will be used and the data is transmitted to a cloud application via internet protocols. The data can be visualized in real time based on the values generated through the sensor. This is a simple sample application. The scaled up version of this implementation would be a weather station network with IoT.

Smart bulb/Switch is also a IoT based implantation like this. The bulbs or switches can be remotely controlled and even at site can be controlled without the manual intervention mostly using mobile devices.

Components of Internet of Things

Internet of Things has two main components Internet and Things. Applications, protocols and interconnected network is called the Internet and every component with connectivity to the internet is referred to as a “Thing”. In technical terms, according to IEEE IoT architecture has 3 components.

• Physical
• Gateway
• Services

The physical layer is comprised of devices, gateway is the network used for communication and services are the data handling part in application layer which is commonly is the cloud.

This can be simply identified by a common example of an IoT implementation. GPS based vehicle tracking system is a basic example of an IoT system. Each vehicle is comprised of a GPS device and the network is the GSM network which transmit the data and the data is handled though an application in a server which is basically the service or the cloud.

Device

Devices are the hardware devices any other physical device connected to the IoT network. This could include below categories of devices.

• Sensors – Temperature, Humidity, proximity, GPS, accelerometer
• Actuators- Motors, bulbs, Switches
• Human interface devices – household appliances, PCs, Tabs
• Computers and smart devices
• Network devices- routers, switches

The physical devices mainly do the analog data conversion to digital signals and collect data. The devices have remote connectivity and real time data transmission with secured channels.

Network

Connecting of billions of new devices to the internet is a great expansion of the network. IPV6 plays a major role in connecting these devices with scalable unique addresses for all. Different protocols are used to for communication like http, https and light weight protocols like ZeroMQ and MQTT. The devices sometimes act and edge computing nodes processing certain amounts of data to have better solutions but in most cases the data is transmitted to the cloud at once where connectivity plays a major role. This is where the wired and wireless technologies comes into play. Below are some of the most popular communication technologies. • Wireless Communication – Bluetooth, NFC, Wifi, ZigBee, LTE, 5G • Wired Communication - Ethernet, Power line communication(PLC)

Cloud

Cloud is the application and presentation layer of the IoT architecture. The servers and computes processing the data are referred to as the cloud platform here. IoT data storing, processing and presentation part happens here. For example a dashboard is a web based representation of a data set collected through many or single IoT node. Below is a screenshot of an implementation of a dashboard done with ThingsBoard platform.

Security

Security is one of the most controversial areas related to IoT. The common security challenges in traditional internet such as authentication, data leakage, unauthorized access and many other aspects are related to IoT as well. Perhaps the data transmission without encryption is one of the major issues in many cases. The operational and computation limitations of IoT devices may limit the functionality to enforce greater security measures at the device end. A popular example is the Mirai botnet incident in 2016 where it is reported that nearly 300,000 IoT devices were infected to an attack. The security measures have to be implemented in each of the layers of IoT starting form policy level changes to protocol and program level changes.

IoT Security Foundation was launched in 2015 to ensure the future of the security aspects of IoT. The rapid growth of IoT will demand for better secured platforms and channels for security of data as well.

Components of Cloud platform

What is Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing technologies are emerging as a common way of provisioning infrastructure services, applications and general computing and storage resources on-demand. (IEEE) The term cloud stands for the on-demand available computer system resources connected through a network which operates without human direct human management. Cloud is an essential part of the IoT architecture as mentioned before. The Cloud also comprises several components with different features. We need the cloud platform to handle, processing, visualize and store the data from IoT networks. Although there could be many components and architectures related to cloud platforms, here we refer to the cloud platforms related to IoT only. The models of cloud computing used with IoT is commonly Platform as a service(PaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS). Below are some of the key components of any cloud platform with IoT.

Device manager - Provisioning/ Monitoring

The IoT end devices will be connected to the cloud application. The authentication of devices to retrieve data should be done by the platform by registering only specified and known devices related to the network. This registration of devices happen through the device manager of the cloud platform. The IoT devices will be registered through device managers by unique IDs and keep the devices connected to the platform by authenticating the correct devices. The security handling part of encryption is also handled by the device management based on keys or certificates. Device manager will also display the status of the devices and the total registered device list for a cloud application. Some management applications provide alerts in the event of a device failure. To summarize below are the functions of the device manger.

• Registration of IoT devices for cloud platform with defined parameters like device names
• Management of devices such as add, remove or modify remotely
• Monitoring of IoT devices connected
• Alerts on device status and operation
• Device authentication and data encryption

Database

The database in a cloud application is the primary data storage. This process is also called as data ingestion in scenarios such as IoT platforms. This means that data is transferred from one location to another to analyze and process further. In IoT architecture while some data processing might happen in edge computing devices the majority of the data chunks are moved to the cloud. This data is stored in databases to analyze and processing. The on demand nature of cloud platform provides the elasticity for the databases to adjust based on the requirement with or without human intervention.

Analytics

The process of data ingestion can happen in real time or in batches or as a combination of both. The analysis part is occurred in cloud based on the system requirement. The batch data are imported on regular intervals as aggregated data and processed in scheduled intervals. The real time data analysis is performed for very time specific and time sensitive operations. For example if we take a vehicle tracking system, the tracking should happen in real time. The data can be processed to give meaningful values using the defined formulas which is called analysis. Sometimes the analysis will require to represent the real time values over a period. Some of the most popular technologies that are currently used for analytics is big data analytics, machine learning and AI.

Dashboard

Dashboards are the representation of processed data. The visualization of the data in the presentation layer of the architecture happens through the dashboard. A dashboard could have graphs, tables, values, maps, diagrams or any other graphic which displays a meaning value of processed data of the IoT network. This could be a online dash board or hosted in a single location. However most IoT related dashboards are accessible over the internet with multiple devices such as computers, Tabs or mobiles. Below is a sample picture of a weather station dashboard.

Popular Cloud Platforms

There are many popular Iot platforms in use as of now. Below are some of the most popular cloud platforms related to IoT.

Azure IoT

Azure IoT is the tech giant Microsoft’s IoT platform. This has predefined App templates tailored for end user business needs. They have some prebuilt applications for different business verticals. Azure also claims to be a scalable, reliable and trusted IoT cloud used by many multinational corporations.

AWS IoT

Being one of the leading cloud service providers AWS IoT platform with more added features such as security, multiple supported other services and superior AI integration.

ThingsBoard

ThingsBoard is an open source IoT platform which supports both cloud and on-premise deployments. The platform has some powerful features of data collection, processing, visualization and device management. This platforms enable connectivity through standard protocols such as HTTP, MQTT and CoAP.

Google Cloud IoT

Google Cloud IoT is the IoT cloud version from google which is supports the IoT architecture as below.

Device

Introduction

Sensors/Edge computing devices

IoT devices are the end nodes of a the network. These are sometimes referred to as constrained devices since mostly these are sensors or actuators. They are connected through the network to enable M2M communication in IoT. The communication methods of Bluetooth, wifi and ZigBee are come of the common communication technologies used by these end nodes. Some of these nodes are collectively act as a mesh network forming large IoT networks as well. The end hardware devices are categorized further as below according their data handling capability.

As most of the devices have computational power at the node itself IoT devices enable edge computing as well where a certain level of processing can happen. For example the temperature can be monitored at a location and an alarm can be generated to a cloud application only when a specific limit is exceeded. The devices of an IoT network can be either a sensor or can actuator or edge computing devices together with the sensors.

Single Board Computers

Single board computers are small and low end computers with low end processing power. These computers comes in small physical size and comparatively inexpensive. Sometimes these are referred to as micro computers or computer on a stick. These computers have the microprocessor, input/outputs, memory and other basic characteristics of a normal computer. Micro computers also used as popular IoT devices since they have the capabilities of IoT devices. One of the popular single board computers is Rasberry Pi.

Why Edge computing devices is the future?

The data transmitted by sensors or devices directly to the cloud are highly dependent on the connectivity which is sometimes not reliable. The resources consumed even for a simple analysis in direct cloud accessed architecture is high which takes more time as well. This is whether the edge computing devices provides a major advantage. The edge computing devices are capable of processing and storing certain amounts of data and transmit to the cloud which saves power and valuable cloud resources together with time. Depending on the requirements with the increase of high performing computer hardware devices the edge computing will provide more promising future.

Micro-controller based edge devices

In these systems, complex data analysis and decision making tasks are handled in the cloud back-end, while the device nodes perform data collection tasks or respond to remote control commands. Overall, this is a nice balance. Hardware is inexpensive to replace and can run on small batteries for multiple years, and heavy compute resources are provided by cloud services that are easy to scale up to meet demand as the number of edge devices increases.

Let’s learn more about microcontrollers…

Microprocessor vs Micro-controller

Computer is comprised of a microprocessor. Basically microcontroller is a mini computer intended for limited task where a computer with microprocessor is intended to do many multiple tasks. There are some similarities and differences between Microprocessor and Microcontroller.

Microcontroller has all the features of a microprocessor with comparatively low performance. The microcontroller is a minicomputer with all the features of a computer.

Block Diagram

System on a Chip (SoC)

System on a Chip or SoC will be the future of processors. With the advancement of the integrated circuit manufacturing, miniature computers on a single chip of silicon is arising. These will have more features, performance and smaller size with separate connectivity modules. SoCs are in contrast to the common traditional motherboard-based PC architecture, which separates components based on function and connects them through a central interfacing circuit board. A SoC integrates a microcontroller or microprocessor with advanced peripherals like graphics processing unit (GPU), Wi-Fi module, or one or more coprocessors. Similar to how a microcontroller integrates a microprocessor with peripheral circuits and memory, an SoC can be seen as integrating a microcontroller with even more advanced peripherals. SoC is increasingly becoming popular in mobile computing, embedded systems and IoT.

Microcontroller Architecture

Microcontrollers incorporate memory, a CPU, peripherals and I/O interfaces into a single chip. The architecture of a device can be depicted as in below diagram.

Hardware ,Software & Firmware

• Hardware - Hardware in ICT domain is referred to as the physical parts of a computer.
• Software - Software is a set of instructions or programs instructing a computer to do specific tasks.
• Firmware - Firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device’s specific hardware.

Applications of Microcontrollers

The nature of microcontrollers has come inherent advantages to use in practical applications.

• Suitable for specific applications
• Programmable according to requirement
• Application development is less time consuming
• Can be prototyped using simulators and emulators
• Easy to design and implantation

This is why microcontroller are widely used in industries for many commercial products. At present most consumer products have certain parts designed with a microcontroller. Below are some of the popular implementations.

• Wearable devices
• Robotics
• Automobile
• Industrial automation
• IoT applications

The use in IoT applications are increasingly becoming popular based on the advantages of microcontroller.

Microcontroller Programming

A microcontroller does not have an instruction set to perform the operation out of the box. Therefore it needs to be programmed with instructions to perform a task. Therefore 3 tasks need to be done to program the microcontroller.

• Write the code in a programming language
• Compile the code to suit the microcontroller used
• Upload the compiled version of program to computer

C is the most popular language to program microcontrollers. However C++ and Python are also used commonly by users.

Communication Technologies

Protocols and Communication Technologies are used in the Internet of Things. Some of the key IoT technologies and protocols (IoT Communication Protocols) are Bluetooth, Wifi, Radio Protocols, LTE-A and WiFi-Direct. These IoT communication protocols meet and complement the specific functional requirements of an IoT system.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is an important short-range IoT communication technology. Bluetooth has become very important in computing and many consumer product markets. It is expected to be a key for wearable products in particular, again connecting to the IoT albeit probably via a smartphone in many cases. The new Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) – or Bluetooth Smart, as it is now branded – is a significant protocol for IoT applications. Importantly, while it offers a similar range to Bluetooth it has been designed to offer significantly reduced power consumption.

Zigbee

ZigBee is similar to Bluetooth and is majorly used in industrial settings. It has some significant advantages in complex systems offering low-power operation, high security, robustness and high and is well positioned to take advantage of wireless control and sensor networks in IoT applications. The latest version of ZigBee is the recently launched 3.0, which is essentially the unification of the various ZigBee wireless standards into a single standard.

Wi-Fi

WiFi connectivity is one of the most popular IoT communication protocol, often an obvious choice for many developers, especially given the availability of WiFi within the home environment within LANs. There is a wide existing infrastructure as well as offering fast data transfer and the ability to handle high quantities of data. Currently, the most common WiFi standard used in homes and many businesses is 802.11n, which offers range of hundreds of megabit per second, which is fine for file transfers but may be too power-consuming for many IoT applications.

Cellular

Any IoT application that requires operation over longer distances can take advantage of GSM/3G/4G cellular communication capabilities. While cellular is clearly capable of sending high quantities of data, especially for 4G, the cost and also power consumption will be too high for many applications. But it can be ideal for sensor-based low-bandwidth-data projects that will send very low amounts of data over the Internet.

LoRaWAN

LoRaWAN is one of popular IoT Technology, targets wide-area network (WAN) applications. The LoRaWAN design to provide low-power WANs with features specifically needed to support low-cost mobile secure communication in IoT, smart city, and industrial applications. Specifically meets requirements for low-power consumption and supports large networks with millions and millions of devices, data rates range from 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps.

IoT Protocols

A protocol is a standard set of rules that allow electronic devices to communicate with each other. These rules include what type of data may be transmitted, what commands are used to send and receive data, and how data transfers are confirmed. You can think of a protocol as a spoken language.

Message Queue Telemetry Transport Protocol (MQTT)

MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) is a messaging protocol developed with the aid of Andy Stanford-Clark of IBM and Arlen Nipper of Arcom in 1999 and is designed for M2M communication. It’s normally used for faraway tracking in IoT. Its primary challenge is to gather statistics from many gadgets and delivery of its infrastructure. MQTT connects gadgets and networks with packages and middleware. All the devices hook up with facts concentrator servers like IBM’s new message sight appliance. MQTT protocols paintings on top of TCP to offer easy and dependable streams of information.

These IoT protocols include 3 foremost additives: subscriber, publisher, and dealer. The writer generates the information and transmits the facts to subscribers through the dealer. The dealer guarantees safety by means of move-checking the authorization of publishers and subscribers.

HTTP

The good old HTTP is still commonly used even in IoT, especially on low cost micro controllers. It has many benefits like its text based (debug and message crafting is easy), many libraries and the most importantly it goes through firewalls. Its biggest disadvantage is that it’s not full duplex. Server can’t talk to the devices (Polling is used to overcome this).

Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)

CoAP is an internet utility protocol for constrained gadgets. It is designed to enable simple, constrained devices to join IoT through constrained networks having low bandwidth availability. This protocol is primarily used for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and is particularly designed for IoT systems that are based on HTTP protocols.

Internet of Things Solution design considerations

Building complete and functional IoT projects can be a puzzle full of surprises if you are not aware of all the building pieces that must be taken into account. The IoT market offers a wide range of technologies, products and applications. All these options are confusing when you face the design and development of a specific IoT project with specific needs. Fortunately, all IoT projects share the same building blocks from an architectural point of view. If you have a clear understanding of these building blocks, it will be easier for you to design a successful IoT system.

Sensors and Devices

Devices and sensors are the “thing” part of your IoT projects. These and other devices interact with the physical environment. It is not only important that they accurately read the phenomenon your application needs (air temperature, power consumption, water flow, traffic density, etc.), but also, they have to be integrated with the overall system architecture too. When selecting the devices, you must check that they support the necessary networking protocols and that your system platform can decode the message formats they send. Device configuration is another important feature. Some devices provide configuration programs while others require internal reprogramming to change their behaviour. Finally, you must evaluate the power source the use (batteries, solar panels, AC, etc.) since it has a strong impact in the system maintenance.

Communications

Although the “i” in IoT stands for internet, you have different kinds of networks available for communications among devices and with the platform. Choosing the right networking technology depends on the characteristics and requirements of the project. It is common to use more than one technology in an IoT project. The main factors to take into account when choosing a networking technology for your IoT projects are:

Devices spread:

If devices are located in the same area like a building, an industrial plant or even a neighbourhood, short-range technologies like Wi-Fi, ZigBee would be a good choice. Otherwise, If devices are widespread in a city or country, long-range technologies like NB-IOT/ LoRa or Sigfox can be the right choice.

Required data rates:

Some networking protocols are not suitable depending on the amount of data that the devices send. For instance, NB-IOT and LoRa do not provide enough bandwidth when a sensor must send the temperature of a room or the state of a parking lot every minute.

Network coverage:

You can deploy your own network for the LoRa project including the use of third-party LoRa networks (TTN) or use an available network provided by third parties (2G, NB-IoT, etc.).

Platform

The software platform of your IoT projects will be in charge of managing the devices (onboarding process, monitoring, etc.) and receiving and processing the messages. It also must provide APIs for reading the gathered data. Your IoT software platform must be flexible enough to support different communication protocols (MQTT, REST, XMPP, WebSockets, etc.).

Platforms are usually deployed in the cloud, but you should check if they can be deployed on-premises in case the project is big enough and investing in computing hardware is an option. In addition to basic functionalities, some platforms provide other interesting features like data mining, multitenancy and deriving data.

Applications

All IoT projects are carried out for a purpose. Maybe the goal is receiving an alarm when a laboratory room reaches a certain temperature or optimizing the water supply of a city. In other cases, IoT projects are used for reducing the power consumption of a building or predicting the maintenance of an industrial engine. IoT applications are just software systems which use the data that is received by the devices and the functionality that they provide. Depending on the level of customization, three categories can be defined:

• IoT vertical applications, which provide out-of-the-box functionalities for a specific application domain like smart waste management, smart building monitoring, smart water metering, smart irrigation, etc.
• Toolboxes and frameworks for building your own dashboards, reports, alarms, graphics, etc. These can be independent products which integrate with external data sources or they can be provided as a part of the IoT software platform.
• Custom software applicationswhich are developed from the ground up using standard software development technologies. These applications will use the IoT software platform APIs as the foundation for building their functionality.

Cloud platform

When comparing platforms, most companies often want an IoT cloud platform that covers all the bases, while being flexible in the ways they can store and stream data. Truly, most companies want out-of-the-box support for opinionated behaviors AND the flexibility to change those defaults that makes it special. Ultimately, as a consumer, you’re looking for the best IoT cloud platform that lets you achieve the above based on your solution.

Scalability

First and foremost, an IoT cloud platform has to support millions of simultaneous device connections and allow you to configure devices for machine-to-machine communication. Of course, every IoT cloud platform will claim they can handle millions of simultaneous device connections. You should look for an IoT cloud platform that has consistently high uptime and offers complete transparency on previous downtimes. Every platform should have some type of platform status page; use this to examine their uptime and how they have handled past incidents. It may also help to examine the types of customers they have helped and the amount of devices they have deployed with them. You should also look for a platform that manages the scaling cloud infrastructure for you. The best vendors will monitor the performance of your devices and help you scale when necessary.

Device Management Features

When comparing IoT cloud platforms, you need to assess how well the vendor allows you to monitor, segment, and manage edge devices that are out in the field. To extract the right data out of your devices, you need a device management system that can interface with microprocessors and local software on IoT devices. This is complicated to build because few companies have an IoT hardware, software, and connectivity ecosystem that can handle bidirectional communication streams and provide device management services that don’t interfere with this process. For companies who want to have complete control over their remote devices, these are some of the basic features you’ll need:

• Cloud API — The ability to organize devices, segment your fleet for more granular control, and monitor the health of your devices in real-time.
• Developer Tools — A central interface or set of tools that allow you to manage and reprogram your IoT devices wirelessly.
• Device command and control — Cloud-based functions that allow you to control variables and events through their Rest API structure.
• Event Logs —An interface that allows you to see what’s happening with devices in real time to improve the experience of finding data that is relevant to you.
• Remote Diagnostics — Features that allow you to actively monitor device health vitals and take preemptive actions when warning signs appear.

Over-the-Air Firmware Updates

Over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates are a vital component of any IoT cloud platform. OTA firmware refers to the practice of remotely updating the code on an embedded device. The value of incorporating OTA update capabilities into a connected product cannot be understated, and include - Companies can test new features by sending updates to one or multiple devices. Companies can save costs by managing the firmware across their fleet of devices from a seamless, unified interface, developers can deploy frequently and reliably, knowing that products will stay functional as updates are released. OTA firmware augments scalability by adding new features and infrastructure to products after they are released.

Complete System Integrations

How does the IoT cloud vendor integrate all the complex stuff that you need for IoT — like cellular modems, carrier/sim cards, device diagnostics, firmware updates, cloud connections, security, application layer, and RTOS ? This will probably require a call to a sales representative to understand how these discrete components work together. Talk with your engineers and make sure these parts all work together in a way that works easily for them. Have them compare these integrations with other IoT cloud vendor platform

Data Management

When it comes to storing, processing, and analyzing data, you need a system that is already built to handle it. The best IoT cloud platforms combine data sources from an entire fleet into a unified data flow that provides product-wide business intelligence. It is also imperative to choose a IoT cloud platform architecture that seamlessly integrates device data with your existing services. This allows you to reap all the benefits of getting to house your data where you want, without having to handle the complex building and maintenance aspects of hosting your own IoT cloud solution. For instance, many companies often want to send device data to their Sales force, Azure, or AWS environment. You should look for an IoT cloud platform that can handle these integrations and allow you to store your data where you want it.