7 Reasons The IoT Will Run On PaaS
The Internet of Things is poised for exponential growth, and all that software and data has to live somewhere. Here's why we think that place will be platform-as-a-service.
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Many in the IT world believe that 2016 is the year that the Internet of Things (IoT) will make a significant impact on enterprise IT. Gartner Research recently forecast that we should expect to see a massive 30% growth rate in the IoT space this year alone. While IoT will likely be deployed on any number of private data centers and cloud architectures, the most popular choice for IoT projects will likely be platform-as-a-service (PaaS).
Just what is Gartner's reasoning behind the predicted popularity of PaaS for IoT use? That's what today's slideshow is all about. In it, we'll go through seven reasons we think PaaS is a great choice when it comes to many IoT deployments.
Remember, PaaS is a platform that sits between software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). The architecture offers greater flexibility than SaaS because you get to control and customize the applications and data -- both of which would be locked into a SaaS provider's management and control, if you went that route. But because of the flexibility and customization required in many IoT deployments, IoT requires the ability to develop, test, and rapidly deploy customized software. It also requires full control over the data collected to analyze and use it as you see fit.
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While this type of flexibility will be necessary, what is not needed is control over underlying infrastructure components such as middleware, operating systems, virtualization, storage, and networking. For most cases, these components won't need to be accessed or customized for IoT projects. Thus, it's easier to let a provider manage those for you.
Click through the following pages to see the reasons why we think PaaS is a great choice when it comes to your next IoT endeavor. Afterward, tell us about your next IoT project -- and what architecture platform you think will suit you best.
IoT projects turn data on its head. Instead of data largely being located inside the data center from the get-go, it will be collected continuously and in real-time. And because IoT covers a huge spectrum of use-case scenarios, it's important that the architecture allow full control of over data so it can be managed and analyzed in any number of ways.
As data is collected from IoT endpoints, the benefits you get from the information gathered may turn out to be different from what you expected. Therefore, an IoT architecture needs to be flexible in terms of how the data is analyzed and ultimately used in making decisions. A SaaS architecture is simply too rigid for the amount of data flexibility required.
Some businesses are getting into IoT because they anticipate it can help them gain a competitive advantage in one way or another. But competition is going to be stiff. Therefore, rapid software development and deployment of new IoT features will be critical. The only cloud architecture that can accomplish what's needed -- while offloading unnecessary tasks to a service provider -- is PaaS.
IoT workflows are simply ways to automate processes that were traditionally performed by humans. Obviously, a big part of IoT is creating ways to automate as many tasks as possible. PaaS gives you access to exactly what is needed -- the application and the data -- in order to create and streamline workflows throughout the IoT solution's lifecycle.
While some IoT deployments may be limited to a single building or campus, others might span the globe in terms of physical implementation. Because of this situation, some IoT architectures must be deployed in a way that allows IoT devices to have uniform access to backend intelligence. IoT deployments rolled out in private data centers will have a difficult time accomplishing this. That's why a cloud architecture such as PaaS is preferred.
One of the more unique characteristics that differentiates IoT solutions from any other type of enterprise solution or application is the need to fully control and manage dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of IoT devices using automated machine-to-machine workflows. Again, this is where control over the application and data comes directly into play in order to tweak workflows to create better efficiencies and outcomes.
PaaS strikes a nice balance between SaaS and IaaS when it comes to IoT aspirations. While security of SaaS is completely left to the service provider to manage, you lose flexibility. Yet with PaaS, much of work needed to secure enterprise class applications happens at lower levels anyway. Therefore, those duties remain the responsibility of the service provider. You only need to be concerned with securing the application and data.
As you can see, PaaS makes a great deal of sense compared to other traditional cloud offerings, or to managing an IoT solution in-house. However, there's nothing to say that other technologies won't one day come in and steal the thunder away from PaaS for IoT. Containers are one such example. Even so, the odds are that your next IoT project will end up running on a PaaS architecture.
As you can see, PaaS makes a great deal of sense compared to other traditional cloud offerings, or to managing an IoT solution in-house. However, there's nothing to say that other technologies won't one day come in and steal the thunder away from PaaS for IoT. Containers are one such example. Even so, the odds are that your next IoT project will end up running on a PaaS architecture.
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