Posted on 31/05/19 by IoT News
The Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud Computing are quite the rage these days in the world of information technology. Though both have different functioning altogether, they are symbiotic in nature and work best as inseparable cohorts.
In order to understand this interoperable affiliation between the two, let us briefly skim through the subject.
IoT and Cloud – a perfect union
IoT devices generate intense amount of data, putting immense pressure on the internet infrastructure. This is where the role of Cloud Computing comes into play. Cloud Computing assists in storing, processing, and transferring data in the cloud instead of connected devices.
For instance, multiple sensors installed at various locations in a factory gathers data continuously from machines and devices, which is later analysed in real-time with the help of analytics tools to identify faults to prevent any future failures. Cloud Computing helps by storing all this data from those hundreds of sensors and applies the required rule engines and algorithms to provide estimated results of those data points.
When a business uses thousands of sensors for data collection, each of those sensors is laden with large amounts of computational power. This demands huge amount of energy and is costly at the same time. In this situation, data can be passed to the cloud from these sensors and processed there in total.
It can be said that the cloud is ‘the brain’ for much of the IoT, as most collected data is after all processed and analysed in the cloud. [1]
Merging IoT and Cloud
The IoT and Cloud Computing have become two most closely associated future internet technologies, which has accelerated the development and deployment of scalable IoT applications and business models. Below are some of the benefits derived from the convergence of both the technologies.
- – Providing infrastructure: Integration of IoT and cloud allows public cloud services to assist third parties gain access to the infrastructure, which can help IoT data or computational modules operating over IoT devices.
- – Pay-as-you-go (PAYG): PAYG Cloud Computing is a payment method, which allows users to be charged only for the data they store.
- – Augmented performance: Data produced by inestimable IoT devices require greater performance in order to quickly interact and connect with other devices. Integrating IoT and cloud can provide connectivity that is essential to share information between the devices and derive prompt meaning from it.
- – Improved scalability: IoT devices demand a lot of storage to share data for valuable purposes. Cloud services like Microsoft Azure IoT Suite, IBM Watson IoT Platform, Google Cloud’s IoT Platform, AWS IoT Platform, and etc., are some of the IoT-based cloud platforms that offer customers with greater storage, which can be increased accordingly. [2]
MarketsandMarkets has predicted the IoT cloud platform market will grow to $7.15b at a CAGR of 30.6% by 2021. According to the market researcher, AI, data analytics, robotics, digital healthcare tech, are some of the disruptive technologies that are said to dominate the IoT cloud platform market in the future. [3]
A number of enterprises have understood and accepted the importance of lining up robust cloud services as the backend to many IoT projects. In addition, most of these organisations have already started aligning the two technologies and are benefiting from it.
In the near future, the combination of IoT and Cloud Computing will inevitably boost the growth of the IoT systems and cloud-based services.
Attend the co-located IoT Tech Expo and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo in Amsterdam on the 19-20 June 2019 to explore the convergence of these technologies in more details. Find out more and register here.
