Omar Elloumi

Whether it’s smart wearables, connected cars and machines, consumer electronics or smart city deployments, there is no denying the internet of things is growing at an increasingly rapid rate. However, yielding this opportunity in the correct way to create true value for enterprise and consumers while ensuring a safe and secure experience does not come without challenges. Addressing these is not something that device providers, service providers or application developers can ignore in their IoT strategies — but there is a solution.

The technical and commercial success of cloud computing technology made it feasible to evolve the most demanding information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructures, such as communication networks, from specialized hardware and software to new software paradigms, referred to as ‘cloud-native’. Internet of Things (IoT) virtualization – IoT built on cloud-native principles – is to IoT platforms what Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is to communication networks.

Smart Cities will be built on a combination of infrastructure from players, including telecoms operators, mobility operators, public safety agencies, and utilities, as well as infrastructure from cities themselves, cities that will run different legacy and platform-based IoT deployments. It is widely acknowledged that no single IoT platform will dominate the market. Here we see the increasing need for IoT platforms to exchange data to address the requirements of cross-application use cases. This will only be achieved by IoT platforms designed and managed for interoperability.