Summary

Welcome to the world of the IoT. As architects in this new field, we have to understand what the customer is building and what the use cases require. IoT systems are not a fire-and-forget type of design. A customer expects several things from jumping on the IoT train.

First, there must be a positive reward. That is dependent on your business and your customer's intent. From my experience, a 5x gain is the target and has worked well for the introduction of new technologies to preexisting industries. Second, IoT design is, by nature, a plurality of devices. The value of IoT is not a single device or a single location broadcasting data to a server. It's a set of things broadcasting information and understanding the value the information in aggregate is trying to tell you. Whatever is designed must scale or be scalable; therefore, that needs attention in upfront design.

We have learned about the segments of IoT and the projected versus actual IoT growth rates. We also have explored a single commercial use case and seen that IoT and edge computing span multiple disciplines, technologies, and functionalities. These mechanics of developing a commercially viable IoT and edge computing system will require the architect to understand these various segments and how they interrelate.

We now start exploring the topology of an IoT and edge computing system as a whole and then break down individual components throughout the rest of the book.