M2M and IoT is emerging with a higher speed than expected. The ecosystem is becoming mature and the players know where to position themselves. As the ecosystem converges with Cloud and big data, businesses need to get ready to address the new wave of connected devices and the intelligence they carry. I do not believe in the story of collecting all intelligence in the center, via the data delivered by edge devices. Because the agility, durability and security of the edge devices will directly impact the results of the total intelligence.
Agility in my term defines the ability of a connected device to adapt different applications. This requires running a flexible software environment that caters for different application requirements. In addition to this, a connected device is expected to be in the field for at least 2 to 6 years. This makes it even more important to have a remote device management and software update capabilities in order to manage the costs.
Java, Linux, RTOS and Native OS are highly used in M2M and IoT applications. As a former Sun employee and SCJA, I really think Java has a lot of advantages over others, like a complex event processing capability to help provide management of device data, remote application updates, standards based portable and proven platform, globally available common APIs and a lot of development support and tools.
All in all, I expect to see more cloud based applications, making the connected objects clever with local storage capabilities. So an application intelligence at the edge is what I am expecting. Therefore the platform used in developing M2M/IoT solutions is very crucial. A platform that support real time decision making, data analysis and storage is really the key for success. Having all these said, security is something that we should never underestimate.
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