10 IoT acronyms, terms, and expressions you might want to know.
Now that IoT is all the rage in many technology circles, if you're like many folks who are new to this whole IoT thing, you're seeing all
manner of acronyms and new terms being thrown around as if everybody knows something you don't; that maybe there's some secret IoT acronym
handbook or IoT phrase decoder ring that only the select few receive. The folks here at wave2wire.com we've been to a number IoT conferences and presented at a few as well.
In partial defense of ourselves and fellow IoT conference speakers/bloggers, we can tell you that it can be difficult to form a sentence
(much less make a PowerPoint slide) without using at least 2 or more acronyms when talking about IoT. We use acronyms to describe other
acronyms and even when we do know what these acronyms stand for we're not sure we always agree on what they actually mean.
We would like to share what our company has learned from developing successful, ground-up Industrial IoT solutions
and from being in the Industrial IoT space for the past several years. To quote Captain Barbosa from the Pirates of the Caribbean fame, these are "more what you'd
call 'guidelines' than actual rules" when it comes to IoT acronyms and terms but hopefully you'll find them directionally correct and mostly useful just the same.
IoT = "Internet of Things". Might was well start with the obvious. Generally used to describe a network of intelligent devices that connect to
(or via) the Internet using an IP address and without requiring human interaction. This includes everything from thermostats, cell phones, coffee makers,
washing machines, alarm systems, smart watches, and almost anything with else with a processor and a connection to the outside world (usually either wired
Ethernet, WiFi, or cellular). As a part of a larger system, IoT can include airplanes, oil rigs, seismic monitoring stations, traffic monitoring systems,
gas turbines, and thousands of other applications. These devices may interact with humans (like your thermostat) and/or each other (like Skynet).
IIoT = "Industrial Internet of Things". This is a sub-class of IoT devices loosely defined as being connected devices or systems which are "industrial"
or commercial in nature. Things like monitoring the levels in a tank farm or how much rice is an industrial silo or tracking fuel usage in a fleet of trucks
would generally be considered IIoT applications. Our company's products are used, for example, in LED lighting control systems for schools, cross-walks, bridge navigation
lights, etc. These devices are monitored remotely and generally live in a harsh or "industrial" environment; as such we're in the IIoT business.
M2M - "Machine To Machine". The precursor to IIoT, M2M is what IIoT used to be called before "IoT" became a thing, thus unleashing an acronym tsunami
across multiple industries. Seriously, M2M applied mostly to industrial/commercial devices which communicated over the Internet and/or private networks. For
example, our first "connected" application a few years ago was in the vending industry where we use cellular connectivity to upload sales data, diagnostic data,
machine status, etc., from a stand-alone vending machine back to a central server. At the time we used phrases like "M2M" and "web-server" but now use phrases
like "IIoT" and "Cloud server" to refer to these same application components. In all fairness to the IoT acronym maker, IoT does refer to a much broader base
of devices that now exist (e.g., Nest thermostats, Fitbit trackers, Apple watches, Amazon Echo, etc.) than the more limited set of devices referred to as M2M
just a few years ago. Another line of thinking is that M2M has simply evolved (devolved) into being merely a subset of the IoT universe and should now be
referred to as IIoT.
VPN - "Virtual Private Network". Now we wouldn't begin to offer an extensive explanation of what a VPN actually is here in a simple blog, however,
a virtual private network generally means network technology (implemented with software and/or hardware) that allows you to create an encrypted (private)
connection over a less secure, non-private network (the Internet). Since most IoT devices ostensibly use a shared, public network (the Internet),
implementing a VPN allows you some level of additional protection and security versus just sending data over the Internet. This makes it significantly
harder for someone to "hack" your IoT device or compromise your cloud server on the other end of things. For what it's worth, all of our IIoT applications
utilize a VPN and yours probably should too.
VPS - "Virtual Private Server". A VPS (also sometimes referred to as Virtual Dedicated Server - or VDS) is a virtual server that looks and acts
just like a dedicated computer but is actually server software running on a computer serving multiple users. A single computer can host several VPS
sessions, each one running with it's own, independent operating system (OS), software stack, etc. Using a VPS architecture can make deploying IoT
applications easier because they're cost-effective, easy to scale, and offer some additional protection/isolation for your server-side applications.
MVNO = "Mobile Virtual Network Operator". Like many other IIoT applications, almost all of our IoT applications connect to the Internet via a
cellular connection. Just like your cell phone, if you need to connect a cellular modem to the Internet you need a cellular provider. Unlike your
cell phone which is most likely tethered to a single cellular carrier (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc.), we have customers all over the U.S. and the
world and can't just use a single cellular provider. That's where an MVNO comes in. An MVNO is essentially a cellular network reseller who generally
has access to all the major carriers and can provide your IIoT device with access to any or all of them. One of the reasons many M2M/IIoT connections
go through an MVNO is because the big guys don't do M2M/IIoT very well, at least not yet, and the MVNO guys specialize in it and have for years
(and in our experience are much easier to work with). These MVNO's can connect you to most any of the networks and can also offer better
connectivity and reporting on data usage across networks. Additionally, with an MVNO you will have more options for server/VPS providers and
more flexibility when it comes to connectivity options (static IP, private static IP, VPN, etc.).
Cloud = "Not an acronym, just what the IoT guys call a web-server...sort of". The "cloud" in simple terms refers to software and/or services that run on a
server somewhere "out there on them Internets" rather than on your computer. Others (rightly) say "there is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer". What this has
to do with IoT is little more complicated. Before cloud servers came along, web sites were traditionally deployed one of two ways:
Hosted Servers - Your web-site along with hundreds of other web-sites running on the same computer. Hosted servers provide cheap but limited scalability/reliability. If
somebody else's ill-behaved web-site crashes the server, your site goes down too.
Dedicated Servers - You or your hosting provider sets up a computer dedicated solely to your web-site. You have full control of the server but it is not
readily scalable; at least not quickly...or cheaply. Traditionally, dedicated servers are much more expensive than hosted servers.
With a cloud server you sort of get the best of both worlds. Because cloud servers generally utilize VPS technology (see acronym above) resources like
processors, RAM, and storage can be scaled up or scaled down as needed, making them more flexible than hosted servers and more cost-effective than dedicated
servers. Advances in virtualization technology (like VMware, Parallels / Odin, Amazon EC2) and server hardware horsepower have made VPS technology and thus
scalable cloud computing pervasive.
All that said, if you are deploying an Industrial IoT application that might grow from hundreds of user's to hundreds of thousands of users a readily scalable
cloud server starts to look mighty good.
LAMP = Linux Apache MySQL PHP/Python/Perl". LAMP (or LAMP stack) is the collection of software that runs on your web-server (or cloud server) to do all
the fancy things IoT customers expect. Linux is the operating system (OS), Apache is the web-server, MySQL is the database, and PHP/Python/Perl are the programming
languages (or more accurately, the server-side scripting languages). If the cloud server is based on the Windows OS instead of Linux it's called a WAMP stack. We'll
leave it to other more detailed blogs to provide additional details on all the above but just know that all IoT cloud servers run a LAMP stack or some functionally
similar software suite in order to do what they do.
Edge Computing = "Not an acronym but a term describing where some of the data processing takes place". Edge computing refers to the data analysis and processing
that takes place at the "edge" of the network versus the data processing that takes place in the cloud. For example, we've developed cellular-based IoT systems that
monitor the compressors in ice making/vending equipment. Since sending cellular data is not free we want to have some intelligence in these devices to decide what
data needs to be sent to the cloud and when that data needs to be sent. Since there's no real value in telling the cloud "everything's fine" 100 times / second
our gateWave "edge" computing device for example collects and analyzes the data locally and then sends the appropriate data to the cloud servers when it's determined to be expedient
to do so; possibly even compressing the data to reduce the required cellular bandwidth even further. As IoT applications get more sophisticated the need for more
power and intelligence at the "edge" of the network becomes more relevant; enough so that it has it's own special moniker now.
MEMS = Micro-Electromechanical Systems. According to Google, MEMS is "a technology that combines computers with tiny mechanical devices such as sensors,
valves, gears, mirrors, and actuators embedded in semiconductor chips". In our corner of the IoT universe, MEMS is accelerometers and pressure sensors.
Our gateWave controller for example has an on-board
accelerometer. In an LED lighting application, for example, we can use the accelerometer to determine whether a school crossing light is leaning or has been
knocked down due to some unfortunate contact with a moving vehicle. The device can then automatically notify maintenance
personal and even tell them what king of replacement pole or light is needed for the repair. That's IoT MEMS in action.
In conclusion
Part of the challenge in communicating clearly is that the Industrial IoT universe encompasses a diversity of disparate technologies (e.g., networking, wireless,
cellular, solar, storage, cloud, power, I/O, MEMS, sensors, etc.) and thus it inadvertently inherits acronyms from these technology disciplines. In addition, IoT
products can include everything from home automation, transportation, "wearables", oil & gas, traffic & safety, agriculture, food & beverage, and dozens of other
vertical markets. Before you know it you're neck-deep in a pool of new acronyms and semi-ambiguous phrases.
The real value proposition for Industrial IoT solutions is in successfully and reliably integrating these new IoT technologies into existing markets (traffic & safety,
transportation, oil & gas, agriculture, vending, mining, logistics, ...to name just a few) and leveraging data and "process visibility" never before available. Companies gathering
"big data" or just a little data (especially in near real-time) and thus gaining new insights into their processes are revolutionizing their businesses and creating more value for their
customers and more revenue for their stakeholders. Partnering with a proven IoT technology provider often times is the lowest-risk and quickest time-to-market to successfully
deploy an IoT solution and we formed wave2wire.com to help companies do just that.
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