The IoT Is A Big Headache For Software Developers

If you want to know the future of an important technology, it pays to look at what the software developers are doing and a new survey of IoT developers reveals that connectivity, performance, and standards are growing areas of concern as IoT projects hit production.

There survey delivers some real insights for the entire internet of things (IoT) community to be gained in a new survey of more than 1,700 IoT developers conducted by the Eclipse Foundation.

IoT connectivity concerns
Perhaps not surprisingly, security topped the list of concerns, easily outpacing other IoT worries. But that's where things begin to get interesting. More than a fifth (21%) of IoT developers cited connectivity as a challenge, followed by data collection and analysis (19%), performance (18%), privacy (18%), and standards (16%).

Connectivity rose to second place after being the number three IoT concern for developers last year. Worries over security and data collection and analysis, meanwhile, actually declined slightly year over year. Responding to a question Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation said,“If you look at the list of developers’ top concerns with IoT in the survey I think connectivity, performance, and standards stand out, those are speaking to the fact that the IoT projects are getting real, that they’re getting out of sandboxes and into production.”

“With connectivity in IoT,” Milinkovich continued, “everything seems straightforward until you have a sensor in a corner somewhere, narrowband or broadband, and physical constraints make it hard to connect."

He also cited a proliferation of incompatible technologies that is driving developer concerns over connectivity.

IoT standards and interoperability
Milinkovich also addressed inter-operability. “Standards is a proxy for interoperability” among products from different vendors, he explained, which is an “elusive goal” in industrial IoT (IIoT)

“IIoT is about breaking down the proprietary silos and re-tooling the infrastructure that’s been in our factories and logistics for many years using OSS standards and implementations, standard sets of protocols as opposed to vendor-specific protocols,” he said. That becomes a big issue when you’re deploying applications in the field and different manufacturers are using different protocols or non-standard extensions to existing protocols and the machines can’t talk to each other.

“This ties back to the requirement of not just having open standards, but more robust implementations of those standards in open source stacks,” Milinkovich said. “To keep maturing, the market needs not just standards, but out-of-the-box interoperability between devices.”

“Performance is another production-grade concern,” he said. “When you’re in development, you think you know the bottlenecks, but then you discover the real-world issues when you push to production.”

Cloudy developments for IoT
The survey also revealed that in some ways, IoT is very much aligned with the larger technology community. For example, IoT use of public and hybrid cloud architectures continues to grow. Amazon Web Services (AWS) (34%), Microsoft Azure (23%), and Google Cloud Platform (20%) are the leading IoT cloud providers, just as they are throughout the industry. 

If anything, AWS’ lead may be smaller in the IoT space than it is in other areas, though reliable cloud-provider market share figures are notoriously hard to come by.

But Milinkovich sees industrial IoT as “a massive opportunity for hybrid cloud” because many industrial IoT users are very concerned about minimizing latency with their factory data, what he calls “their gold.” He sees factories moving towards hybrid cloud environments, leveraging “modern infrastructure technology like Kubernetes, and building around open protocols like HTTP and MQTT while getting rid of the older proprietary protocols.”

How IoT development is different 
In some ways, the IoT development world doesn’t seem much different than wider software development. For example, the top IoT programming languages mirror the popularity of those languages over all, with C and Java ruling the roost.
But Milinkovich noted that when developing for embedded or constrained devices, the programmer’s interface to a device could be through any number of esoteric hardware connectors.

“You’re doing development using emulators and simulators, and it’s an inherently different and more complex interaction between your dev environment and the target for your application,” he said. “Sometimes hardware and software are developed in tandem, which makes it even more complicated.”

For example, building an IoT solution may bring in web developers working on front ends using JavaScript and Angular, while backend cloud developers control cloud infrastructure and embedded developers focus on building software to run on constrained devices. No wonder IoT developers have so many things to worry about. 

Network World

You Might Also Read: 

IoT For Business & Creating 'Digital Twins':

IoT Is In The Dark When It Comes To ePrivacy:

 

« France’s National Cybersecurity Policy: Both Defend & Attack
Nasty Phishing Scam Targets Instagram »

Infosecurity Europe
CyberSecurity Jobsite
Perimeter 81

Directory of Suppliers

DigitalStakeout

DigitalStakeout

DigitalStakeout enables cyber security professionals to reduce cyber risk to their organization with proactive security solutions, providing immediate improvement in security posture and ROI.

Alvacomm

Alvacomm

Alvacomm offers holistic VIP cybersecurity services, providing comprehensive protection against cyber threats. Our solutions include risk assessment, threat detection, incident response.

MIRACL

MIRACL

MIRACL provides the world’s only single step Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) which can replace passwords on 100% of mobiles, desktops or even Smart TVs.

Directory of Cyber Security Suppliers

Directory of Cyber Security Suppliers

Our Supplier Directory lists 7,000+ specialist cyber security service providers in 128 countries worldwide. IS YOUR ORGANISATION LISTED?

North Infosec Testing (North IT)

North Infosec Testing (North IT)

North IT (North Infosec Testing) are an award-winning provider of web, software, and application penetration testing.

Quotium

Quotium

Quotium provides automated testing technologies to make business software applications secure and robust.

Hack in the Box Security Conference (HitBSecConf)

Hack in the Box Security Conference (HitBSecConf)

HITBSecConf is a platform for the discussion and dissemination of next generation computer security issues. Our events feature two days of training and a two-day multi-track conference

Kramer Levin

Kramer Levin

Kramer Levin is a full-service law firm with offices in New York and Paris. Practice areas include Cybersecurity, Privacy and Data Protection.

National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO)

National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO)

NASCIO's Cybersecurity Committee focuses helps state CIOs to formulate high-level security and data protection policies and technical controls.

Cimcor

Cimcor

Cimcor’s flagship software product, CimTrak, helps organizations to monitor and protect a wide range of physical, network and virtual IT assets in real-time.

Inky Technology Corp

Inky Technology Corp

Inky® Phish Fence is an email protection gateway that uses sophisticated AI, machine learning and computer vision algorithms to block deep sea phishing attacks that get through every other system.

SaferVPN

SaferVPN

SaferVPN is a Virtual Private Network services provider offering secure encrypted access to the internet.

Sysorex Government Services

Sysorex Government Services

Sysorex Government Services helps customers meet their strategic missions by providing secure, optimized IT solutions that allow them to perform more efficiently and effectively.

Arqit Quantum

Arqit Quantum

Arqit's mission is to use transformational quantum encryption technology to keep safe the data of our governments, enterprises and citizens.

SecureStream Technologies

SecureStream Technologies

SecureStream Technologies have built the IoT SafetyNet - the Network Security Analytics platform to Eliminate Security Threats, Guarantee Privacy, Ensure Compliance, Simply & Easily.

Heartland Business Systems (HBS)

Heartland Business Systems (HBS)

Heartland Business Systems serves commercial, public sector and small to medium business with results-driven and dedicated information technology services.

ELLIO Technology

ELLIO Technology

ELLIO Technology is a cybersecurity company that reduces alert overload, improves incident response, and helps security teams target serious attackers who pose a real threat.

Fairly AI

Fairly AI

Fairly AI is on a mission to democratize safe, secure, and compliant AI across the enterprise.

Defence Labs

Defence Labs

Defence Labs is a cybersecurity company specialising in cost effective penetration testing for small-to-medium sized enterprises.

USX Cyber

USX Cyber

USX Cyber was founded on the idea that small and medium businesses deserve and require the same level and sophistication of cyber protection as large enterprises.

Screwloose IT

Screwloose IT

Screwloose IT are a national provider of information technology services. We specialise in managed IT, cloud services, cyber security, website design and digital marketing for businesses of all sizes.