Getting ready for the Internet of Things

The use of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the applications and services that support it are rising at an unprecedented rate. This is due to connected devices, such as wearables, making all aspects of life easier - from social to health, civic and professional. In fact, Gartner predicts that the use of IoT will grow exponentially, with at least 4.9 billion connected things expected to be in use this year, which is up 30% from 2014. By 2020, the research firm forecasts this number to reach 25 billion.

IoT, however, is much more than a single technology - it is a concept driven by the use of embedded sensors and real-time monitoring, allowing consumers and businesses to make situational decisions based on the sensor’s information. As a result, no single architecture can address all potential IoT devices and their requirements. However, a scalable architecture that can add or subtract resources to support a wide variety of scenarios will help prepare organisations for the impact IoT will have broadly.

IoT concerns to consider and mitigate

With more applications required to run these connected devices, traditional infrastructure concerns, such as scale and reliability, will become paramount. Additional challenges with identity and access, improving the user experience and the need for faster provisioning of services could overwhelm IT departments. Hence, a robust, scalable and intelligent infrastructure will be necessary to handle the massive traffic load.

As IoT continues to grow, IT professionals will be tasked with designing and building the infrastructure that can cope with the increasing requirements that lie ahead. Yet, no doubt, many of today’s traditional architectures will buckle under the increasing demand of all the connected devices. According to IDC, the rate at which applications double in the enterprise is every four years. However, this is likely to reduce to half as more IoT devices require applications to support them and organisations need to brace themselves for the data deluge.

Strengthen infrastructure

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the most likely method for connected devices to locate needed services, and it is potentially the means by which people will locate the devices themselves. There might be other schemas in the planning process, but those would require the adoption of a new technology naming standard, which would be costly, slow and highly unlikely.

Unless organisations remain proactive, the ubiquity of connected devices presents a gold mine for attackers. Outpacing attackers in the current threat landscape will require more resources in order to minimise risk. Organisations will need to continue to strengthen their own infrastructures and look to cloud services such as denial of service (DoS) mitigation to lessen the effects of attacks.

The explosion of embedded devices will potentially drive more mainstream Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) adoption. There are several advantages to IPv6, such as a large namespace, address self-configuration and the potential to remove network address translation (NAT) problems. The data centre will require some planning to embrace this shift. Components such as routers, firewalls and application delivery controllers will need to be IPv6-ready, capable of understanding the protocols and data that devices will use to communicate.

To ensure security, intelligent routing and analytics, networking layers will need to be fluent in the language in which the organisation’s devices are using. Understanding these protocols within the network will allow traffic to be secured, prioritised and routed accordingly. Recognising and prioritising these messages will enable better scale and manageability of the onslaught of device traffic and data. Intelligence will also be needed to categorise what data needs attention and what doesn’t.

To ensure high availability of IoT services, enterprises should consider boosting traffic management and monitoring. This will both mitigate business continuity risks and prevent potential losses. From a project planning standpoint, organisations also need to do capacity planning and watch the growth rate of the network so that the increased demand for the required bandwidth can be met.

It is without doubt that the Internet of Things is already here and changing the way we work and play. Therefore, there is no better time for businesses to take bold actions to deliver the benefits of the Internet of Things.