Whitepaper discusses both current and future IoT tech

The topic attracts a lot of interest among a very large and diverse community of stakeholders, and the refined solutions will be key to the success of this technology now and for generations to come.

The IoT is an infrastructure of interconnected objects, people or systems that processes and reacts to physical and virtual information. IoT collectively uses today’s Internet backbone to connect things using sensors and other technologies. Through data collection and analysis, it achieves a multitude of outcomes that generally aim to improve user experience or the performance of devices and systems.

How data is collected and implemented will determine how transformational IoT can become. Security grows exponentially in importance as devices that were once isolated become interconnected and more and more information is collected. As with most disruptive technologies, solutions are developed by a wide range of providers promoting their proprietary approaches, which can also impact interconnectivity. Bringing the ambitious visions expressed by IoT to reality will require significant efforts in standardisation.

Dr. Timo Kubach, Vice President Cloud Platform Strategy at SAP, stated: "IoT is an important topic that requires careful consideration by Standards Organisations and others if we are to realise its true benefits. Recognising this, we aimed at identifying the future state of IoT and providing recommendations on what actions IEC, and the broader standards community could take to support the anticipated dynamic growth of IoT solutions.”

This whitepaper aims to provide an overview of today’s IoT, including its limitations and deficiencies in the area of security, interoperability and scalability. It includes several use cases from industry, public and customer domains that point to requirements for a smart and secure IoT platform. It also discusses next-gen platform-level technologies in the field of connectivity, processing and security. It provides important recommendations to IoT stakeholders and for IoT standardisation work and was developed by the IEC Market Strategy Board (MSB) with major contributions from SAP and Fraunhofer AISEC.