With the rise of the cloud came the rise of hyperscalers – those incredibly large cloud service provider companies, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba – which have made it possible to create virtualised data infrastructure for scalability and less CapEx costs.
Cloud integration with hyperscalers has, in particular, been advantageous to IoT and allowed for more agility in deploying and managing solutions, as well as being sizeable and scalable enough to compute and store data generated through IoT, whether it’s Massive IoT, which is the widespread ecosystem of IoT devices in large-scale deployments, or Critical IoT, which is the use of IoT in solutions with little tolerance to lag and interruptions, such as robotics and machine learning.
If organisations are deploying IoT solutions, one of the best approaches is leveraging an IoT service provider. There are many strong reasons to use an IoT service provider, but one reason is that there is an opportunity to choose an IoT provider that has key partnerships with cloud service providers.
An IoT provider should also be able to help define the kinds of questions to explore when considering options:
Business needs: What are the particular requirements for your organisation? Are communications mission-critical and require dedicated bandwidth of private cloud or would public cloud suffice?
Data requirements: Again, this is going to be a large determinant in the type of computing your organisation requires. If a SaaS model for operations is your largest data requirement, then the public cloud would be the optimal choice. If you’re building operations that require machine learning and AI that will power robotics or autonomous applications, then an edge computing solution would be more ideal.
Platform infrastructure: Deciding whether you need Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is another large consideration. Those companies that want or need to be involved in application development and have customisation should consider PaaS. IaaS gives organisations more control over the infrastructure through a dashboard or API.
Another crucial aspect in choosing an IoT provider that works directly with hyperscalers, or cloud service providers, is organisations can avoid provider lock-in. According to a survey conducted by Gartner, 81 percent of those surveyed responded that they work with two or more providers.
Finally, certain questions regarding data security and data sovereignty should also be addressed. How data is transmitted and stored in regard to security should be investigated and should align with your own security requirements, guidelines, and policies. Any certification or compliances, such as the ISO 27000 series, should be checked to make sure they are valid.
Data sovereignty is a major consideration and growing concern with data computing and storage. Many cloud service providers have data centers across the globe, and where your data is stored is dependent on the regulations of that location’s governing body. Your organisation should know where and how your data will be stored so you can meet those requirements.
Part of defining a computing infrastructure and strategy is determining whether all computing will take place on the edge, in the cloud, or in a hybrid approach. Drilling down even further, there are different edge locations – telco, device, network – and the cloud can be private, public, or a combination of both.
An IoT provider, especially one that provides end-to-end strategy, can help determine the best approach to data processing and storage that works for the application and for financial requirements. KORE is the leading global IoT provider with strategic partnerships to help manage, deploy, and scale IoT through connectivity, solutions, and analytics. Reach out to learn how we can help build the best computing infrastructure for your use case through our strategic partnerships with leading hyperscalers.
Check out our infographic, "IoT Infrastructure Computing: Hyperscalers, the Edge, and Cloud", to learn more.
U3GM Blog Post Comments