The Internet of Things faces interoperability challenges
The number of IT companies wanting to lead the IoT revolution has caused the industry to become fragmented, as each company will have its own system. Research by McKinsey suggests that if the IoT does not become more interoperable its value will stall at $7tn instead of the predicted $11tn by 2025. Interoperability will be vital for the IoT to reach its potential.
Fragmentation. Silos. They’re words that IT managers have feared and fought for years – and they’re back with the internet of everything (IoE).

Despite the many concerns around privacy and security, a poll by IoT Nexus found that interoperability was seen as the biggest challenge to the IoE by 77% of respondents.

And that’s a problem. Research by McKinsey suggests that 40% of the value of the IoE will need to be unlocked via interoperability; failing to overcome that hurdle could cost trillions of dollars and leave the IoT less useful that promised.

Every major IT company wants to lead the charge, meaning each is developing its own set of standards and building proprietary systems – a problem faced by a host of other technologies that have come before. Is it too late to save the internet of things from becoming fractured into useless pieces – an internet of silos – or can the industry work together to build a true internet of everything?

Why is interoperability important?

Given the potential benefits, and the previous interoperability challenges faced by IT, it may seem surprising that it continues to be a problem. “It’s an issue that hasn’t gone away and was never solved,” said Justin Anderson, director of IoE firm Flexeye. “Part of the reason for that is a lot of the applications that have been created … have been stand-alone systems [and] often it’s in their interest not to open it up for all to be able to engage with.”

That single-mindedness is flawed; tech companies need to work together because failing to unlock the value in IoE could be costly. McKinsey predicts the value of IoE will top $11tn by 2025, but without interoperability will stall at $7tn.

And it’s not all about the boost to the economy. “Interoperability is vital if the internet of things is going to reach its potential, whether that is in cities, health, education or any other example,” said Maurizio Pilu, executive director for collaborative R&D at Digital Catapult. “Interoperability lowers barriers to innovation and is fundamental to the creation of participation. Additionally, and importantly, interoperability allows ideas to scale faster. For example a digital business can develop a home gadget and sell it at a DIY store knowing it will just work. Interoperability also enables data to be shared and combined – ultimately allowing many more IoT services and solutions to be developed.”

Craig Bachmann, senior director of the open digital programme at industry body TM Forum, said interoperability offers a range of benefits: operational efficiencies, such as improved uptime; new services that deliver outcomes; more productivity for employees, as well as more “engaging work experiences”. All of this “significantly changes how businesses make money and create value,” Bachmann added. Indeed, McKinsey’s report cites an oil rig that has 30,000 sensors, but uses only 1% of the data. It uses the data for anomaly detection and control but “not [for] optimisation and prediction, which provide the greatest value”, McKinsey points out.

There are potential downsides. If systems can link up and share data, they’re potentially less secure. “On one side interoperability opens up systems,” said Pilu. “They are no longer single-vendor and tightly controlled, and inevitably this opens them up to vulnerabilities. But on the other hand, interoperable, open systems allow those vulnerabilities to be found and fixed quickly. In principle, it allows communities of practitioners to apply several pairs of eyes to the problem, and even design in security and privacy from the start.”

What can be done?

The standard response to improving interoperability is, well, standards. Every IoE product from a major tech company seems to come with its own set of standards, from Microsoft-backed AllSeen Alliance to the Open Interconnect Consortium, backed by Intel, Samsung and Dell, and the Thread Group, with support from ARM and Google’s Nest.

But drafting standards isn’t enough, said Pilu. People need to actually use them. “The acid test is adoption. A standard that is not deployed in the millions has not yet caught on so cannot be called a standard. It’s hard to say how it will happen. Some say it will be one of the giants shipping millions of devices supporting a standard. One thing is very clear, however: for standards to be established, openness is essential.”

Pilu compared it to the web, pointing out that the “bold move” to an open commons was what made it work. “There does still remain a cultural shift to openness that we need to be aware of in IoT interoperability,” said Pilu.

Open APIs (application programme interfaces) are another solution, noted Bachmann, offering access to data and systems “to provide a broader palette for developers”, and makes IoE more of a “fabric” between IT services. But that raises other problems, said Anderson. APIs are become more standardised, meaning “we’re moving in that direction to make the API the interface into that data”.

He said: “The challenge is, that once you need to address a particular system and extract the data, you still need to get the instruction manual out about the API to work out the data scheme or the data model that sits behind it, and start to build up a big picture. And that’s quite a time-consuming effort for any developer and expensive to be able to do.”

There there is HyperCat. The British group, of which Anderson is a board member, looks to standardise and catalogue data types to make it easier for IoE devices and systems to share information, even if they can’t work together in any other way.

In short, there are solutions to the potentially costly interoperability question, but they make take time toemerge. “IoT is so young, complex and its applications so vast, that interoperability will be a work in progress for some time,” Pilu said. “As the main problem is not a technical one but a business one, it can be overcome.”

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