IoT developer survey : my 2 cents one year later …

As last year, I have decided to write a blog post about my point of view on the IoT developer survey from the Eclipse Foundation (IoT Working Group) with IEEE, Agile IoT and the IoT Council.

From my point of view, the final report gives always interesting insights on where the IoT business is going and about that, Ian Skerrett (Vice President of Marketing at Eclipse Foundation) has already analyzed the results, available here, writing a great blog post.

I want just to add 2 more cents on that …

Industry adoption …

It’s clear that industries are adopting IoT and there is a big increment for industrial automation, smart cities, energy management, building automation, transportation, healthcare and so on. IoT is becoming “real” even if, as we will see in the next paragraphs, it seems that we are still in a prototyping stage. A lot of companies are investing on that but few of them have real solutions running in the field. Finally, from my point of view, it could be great to add more information about countries because I think that there is a big difference on how and where every country is investing for IoT.

The concerns …

Security is always the big concern but, as Ian said, interoperability and connectivity are on a downward trend; I agree with him saying that all the available middleware solutions and the IoT connectivity platforms are solving these problems. The great news is that all of them support different open and standard protocols (MQTT, AMQP but even HTTP) that is the way to go for having interoperability; at same time we are able to connect a lot of different devices, supporting different protocols, so the connectivity problem is addressed as well.

Coming back to security, the survey shows that much more software developers are involved on building IoT solutions even because all the stuff they mostly use are SSL/TLS and data encryption so at software level. From my point of view, some security concerns should be addressed at hardware level (using crypto-chip, TPM and so on) but this is an area where software developers have a lack of knowledge. It’s not a surprise because we know that IoT needs a lot of different knowledge from different people but the survey shows that in some cases not the “right” people are involved on developing IoT solution. Too much web and mobile developers are working on that, too few embedded developer with a real hardware knowledge.

Languages : finally a distinction !

Last year, in my 2 cents, I asked for having a distinction on which side of an IoT solution we consider the most used programming languages. I’m happy to know that Eclipse Foundation got this suggestion so this year survey asked about languages used on constrained devices, gateway and cloud.

The results don’t surprise me : C is the most used language on “real” low constrained devices and all the other languages from Java to Python are mostly used on gateways; JavaScript fits in the cloud mainly with NodeJS. In any case, NodeJS is not a language so my idea is that providing only JavaScript as possible answer was enough even because other than using a server-side framework like NodeJS the other possibility is using JavaScript in “function as a service” platforms (i.e. Lambda from AWS, Azure Functions and so on) that are mostly based on NodeJS. Of course, the most used language in the cloud is Java.

What about OS ?

Linux is the most used OS for both constrained devices and IoT gateways but … here a strange thing comes in my mind. On “real” constrained devices that are based on MCUs (i.e. Cortex-Mx) you can run few specific Linux distros (i.e. uCLinux) and not a full Linux distro so it’s strange that Linux wins on constrained devices but then when the survey shows what distros are used, uCLinux has a very low percentage. My guess is that a lot of software developers don’t know what a constrained device is 🙂

On constrained devices I expect that developers uses “no OS” (programming on bare metal) or a really tiny RTOS but not something closed to Linux.

On gateways I totally agree with Linux but Windows is growing from last year.

Regarding the most used distros, the Raspbian victory shows that we are still in a prototyping stage. I can’t believe that developers are using Raspbian so the related Raspberry Pi hardware in production ! If it’s true … I’m scared about that ! If you know what are the planes, trains, building automation systems which are using something like that, please tell me … I have to avoid them 🙂

Regarding the protocols …

From my point of view, the presence of TCP/IP in the connectivity protocols results is misleading. TCP/IP is a protocol used on top of Ethernet and Wi-Fi that are in the same results and we can’t compare them.

Regarding communication protocols, the current know-how is still leading; this is the reason why HTTP 1.1 is still on the top and HTTP 2.0 is growing. MQTT is there followed by CoAP, which is surprising me considering the necessity to have an HTTP proxy for exporting local traffic outside of a local devices network. AMQP is finding its own way and I think that in the medium/long term it will become a big player on that.

Cloud services

In this area we should have a distinction because the question is pretty general but we know that you can use Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure for IoT in two ways :

• as IaaS hosting your own solution or an open source one for IoT (i.e. just using provided virtual machines for running an IoT software stack)
• as PaaS using the managed IoT platforms (i.e. AWS IoT, Azure IoT Hub, …)

Having Amazon AWS on the top doesn’t surprise me but we could have more details on how it is used by the IoT developers.

Conclusion

The IoT business is growing and its adoption as well but looking at these survey results, most of the companies are still in a prototyping stage and few of them have a real IoT solution in the field.

It means that there is a lot of space for all to be invited to the party ! 😀

 

IoT developer survey : my point of view

Few days ago, the Eclipse Foundation published the report of the last IoT developer survey sponsored by the foundation itself with IEEE IoT and Agile IoT. This survey has as main objective to understand what are the preferred technologies used by developers in terms of languages, standards and operating systems; furthermore, it shows what are the main concerns about IoT and how companies are shipping IoT solutions today.

Great content about this report was published by Ian Skerrett (Vice President of Marketing at Eclipse Foundation) on his blog and on slideshare with a summary of all main information about it.

I’d like just to add my 2 cents and doing some absolutely personal considerations about the results …

Companies are investing …

Regarding how companies are delivering IoT solutions, it’s clear that the IoT market is growing. A lot of companies already have IoT products in the fields and the others are planning to develop them in the coming months. It’s not a surprise, other than a buzzword, the IoT is a real business opportunity for all companies strictly related to the embedded devices (silicon vendors, OEMs, ..) or software companies (for the cloud and application side) which are rapidly change how their business is made.

Security and interoperability : the big concerns

The result related to the main concerns about IoT is very clear : people and companies are worried about the security. All data flowing from our personal life or owned by companies to the cloud need to be protected in order to avoid someone can steal them. The concern about security is strictly related to software protocols (i.e. SSL/TLS, …) and hardware stuff (i.e. cryptochip, …) and today it seems that a very good solution isn’t available. The same is for interoperability : having a lot of IoT standard protocols means having NO standard protocols. A lot of consortiums are trying to define some standard specifications and frameworks in order to define a standard but … they are too much; all big companies are divided in different consortiums and some of them are part of more then one : this is a big deal, as for protocols … it means NO standard.

Developer prefer Java and C … what about JavaScript ?

It’s not a surprise the first place of Java as preferred language and C as second one : Java is used in a lot of cloud solutions which are based on open source products and C is the better language for developing on devices side with great performance at low cost (at least from an hardware point of view). First strange position is about JavaScript as third most used language : I hope this position is related to its huge usage with NodeJS on server side and not as “embedded” language on devices … I’m scared about that.

Protocols : the current know-how is leading

Now, the protocols …

Having HTTP/1.1 as first used protocol is real because today it’s the only well known protocol in the developers world; in order to develop and deliver an IoT solution with a quick time to market, companies leverage on internal know-how and sometimes they don’t invest to figure out how other protocols work and if they have other advantages. It explains to me this position, thanks to HTTP/1.1 simplicity and its ASCII/text based nature : a lot of developers don’t like binary format so much. Last point is that the REST architecture is a very good solution in a lot of scenarios and HTTP/1.1 is the most used protocol (the only one ?) for that.

MQTT and CoAP are used a lot thanks to the available open source projects and their simplicity; MQTT is very lightweight and works great on tiny embedded devices, CoAP tries to overcome some HTTP/1.1 disadvantages (i.e. server push, observer, …) with new features and its binary nature.

A lot of developers are scared about AMQP because I have to admit it’s not so simple like the previous ones but it’s powerful and everyone should give it a try. If you want to start with it, you can find a lot of links and resources here.

I’m surprised by the fourth position of HTTP/2.0 ! I mean … how many developers know, love and use HTTP/2 today ? I was surprised by this high position … I expected it behind “in-house, proprietary”, AMQP and XMPP. I suppose that companies are prototyping solutions using this protocol because they think that thanks to the HTTP/1.1 knowledge it’s quite simple to move to the next version : I think it’s totally wrong, because HTTP/2.0 is completely different from HTTP/1.1. I love it … I’ll invest in it.

OS : Linux and RTOS on bare metal

Regarding operating systems, the first position for Linux isn’t a surprise but we have to consider it both on server side and devices side (even if embedded devices based on Linux are a lot). The other OS are only for embedded devices (low constrained devices) so the percentages don’t have any help from cloud side. Finally Linux is useful for IoT gateway too (as we know with Kura) even if Microsoft, for example, is investing in its Windows IoT Core and will release an IoT Gateway SDK in the next months.

All the services in the cloud

Not a surprise Amazon AWS with its first position as Cloud services provider but I don’t think about their relatively new AWS IoT platform but all the IoT open source stuff that developers prefer to run on Amazon VMs than Azure VMs.

Conclusion

Here the great news is that IoT market is growing and developers/companies are investing in it to try to be on the market as soon as possible. The “bad” news is that too much different protocols and frameworks are used and the way to interoperability and interconnection is quite long or … infinite ?

Azure IoT Hub and IoT Suite : my chat with DotNetPodcast team

For all italians people (or all my foreign friends who can understand italian ;-)) I’d like to announce another podcast about the Internet of Things on DotNetPodcast.

This is my third podcast on this stuff and I want to thank the DotNetPodcast team (Roberto Albano, Antonio Giglio, Massimo Bonanni) who invited me another time. It’s a pleasure for me.

This time I speak about the new Microsoft Azure managed service for the IoT world : the IoT Hub.

Why the need for the IoT Hub, what are its main features, connectivity and supported protocols, security, SDKs and certified hardware and how it fits well in an end to end IoT solution built using the Azure IoT Suite. Finally a brief comparison with the competitor AWS IoT from Amazon. These are the main points of my chat that you can find here.

I hope you’ll enjoy it !

IoT, Arduino, REST e Cloud … su HTML.it

Giunti al nono capitolo della guida introduttiva su Arduino, possiamo finalmente toccare con mano la nuvola !

In particolare, si parte dalla realizzazione di un semplice client HTTP REST su Arduino attraverso il quale poter trasmettere nel Cloud i valori di temperatura rilevati dal relativo sensore e letti attraverso il driver sviluppato nei capitoli precedenti. La nuvola che ospita il servizio di acquisizione dati è ovviamente Azure attraverso una semplice applicazione ASP.NET MVC4 Web API.

IoT, breve introduzione alla scelta del protocollo … su HTML.it

Il percorso della guida introduttiva sullo sviluppo su Arduino si fa sempre più interessante, nell’avvicinamento al Cloud. L’ultimo capitolo appena pubblicato è una brevissima discussione sulla scelta del miglior protocollo per l’Internet of Things. Ovviamente, non è possibile ridurre un discorso complesso in pochissime righe ma è fondamentalmente utile per comprenderne l’utilizzo nei capitoli successivi. Il vasto panorama dei protocolli per l’IoT andrebbe affrontato con una guida a parte, considerando la sua ampia gamma di attori in gioco.

Arduino, sviluppiamo il nostro primo driver … su HTML.it

La guida introduttiva allo sviluppo su Arduino entra nel vivo con un capitolo dedicato alla realizzazione di un vero e proprio driver e nel caso specifico per un sensore di temperatura.

L’obiettivo è quello di ottenere un’interazione con il mondo che ci circonda e ricavare una grandezza fisica da trasformare in un dato da inviare al Cloud !

Arduino e l’accesso alla “grande rete” … su HTML.it

Altro capitolo della mia guida introduttiva su Arduino e questa volta si inizia a parlare di connessione alla grande rete dalla Ethernet shield ad un semplicissimo client HTTP.

Ovviamente, questo non è nient’altro che la preparazione verso l’accesso al cloud !

Better Embedded 2014 : sarò speaker sull’Internet of Things !

Quest’anno avrò l’enorme piacere ed onore di essere speaker all’unica conferenza formativa italiana sul mondo embedded, Better Embedded 2014, che si svolgerà il 4 e 5 Luglio a Firenze presso l’Hotel Londra.

La mia sessione sarà dedicata all’Internet of Things con uno sguardo alla “guerra” tra i principali protocolli utilizzati quali HTTP (REST), AMQP, MQTT e CoAP (ad essi aggiungerò presto anche XMPP e DDS). Il confronto tra di essi sarà letteralmente sul campo, quindi non più un’introduzione ai protocolli stessi ma singole battaglie su campi diversi in cui ciascun protocollo cercherà di avere la meglio sugli altri.

Ci sarà un vincitore ? Per saperlo non vi resta che iscrivervi all’evento e venire a seguire la mia sessione !

Arduino, leggere i movimenti da un potenziometro…su HTML.it

Dopo aver parlato di Physical Computing nel capitolo precedente, la mia guida introduttiva su Arduino è giunta al quinto appuntamento in cui si affronta il semplice utilizzo di un potenziometro mediante un esempio, per iniziare a capire come poter gestire i pin analogici.

Dal prossimo capitolo, senza svelarvi nulla e rovinarvi la sorpresa, inizia il nostro viaggio che porterà la nostra board sul Cloud !

IoT@Work : si è svolto a Roma l’evento sull’Internet of Things

Venerdì 6 Giugno si è tenuto l’evento IoT@Work a Roma presso la sede Microsoft, organizzato dalla community romana DomusDotNet e dalla community online TinyCLR.it (di cui faccio parte).

Grazie all’ospitalità di Massimo Bonanni e di tutti i ragazzi della community, abbiamo trascorso un’intera giornata all’insegna dell’Internet of Things.

La mattinata, molto teorica, è iniziata con Mirco Vanini che ci ha illustrato che cosa è e cosa non è l’Internet delle Cose, con una serie di casi d’uso reali e le proiezioni future di questo nuovo business. La sessione successiva ha visto me stesso come protagonista nell’affrontare da un punto di vista tecnico i principali protocolli che sono utilizzati maggiormente nell’IoT, ciascuno con i proprio vantaggi e svantaggi. Le sessioni mattutine sono state concluse da Lorenzo Maiorfi che ci ha parlato di “flow-programming”, del suo campo di applicazione nell’IoT e di due principali strumenti che possono essere utilizzati a questo scopo : NodeRed ed Orleans.

Dopo la pausa pranzo, abbiamo ripreso con una parte assolutamente pratica ed una demo corale (io, Mirco e Lorenzo insieme) che ha visto protagonista ventole, luci, prese comandate, sensori ed attuatori pilotati e coordinati da un broker su base NodeRed …. insomma un intero sistema di domotica casalinga e/o industriale. Infine, Francesco Baldassarri ci ha illustrato quali sono gli strumenti che Intel mette a disposizione degli sviluppatori per l’IoT (vedi la board Galileo) e quali saranno le novità future !

Come sempre, in un evento del genere, fa sempre piacere avere il riscontro delle persone, soprattutto quando ti contattano il giorno dopo per farti le congratulazioni ed avere delucidazioni in merito !

Insomma…chi non è venuto…non potrà mai sapere cosa si è perso !

😉