You probably experience the Internet of Things on a daily basis in your personal and work life. Much of the public’s impression of IoT is from their personal interaction with a Fitbit fitness tracker, an Amazon Echo assistant, or a Google thermostat.
A 2017 search for the keyword IoT on LinkedIn reveals 7,189 job postings related to IoT. Glassdoor shows 5,440 and http://monster.com/ shows more than a thousand requisitions. The IoT market is booming for talent as well as solutions. As is often the case, technologists will take a path of least resistance to binding what had been an unconnected object to the internet. That approach certainly works, but it is different than the role of an architect. An architect needs to understand the big picture of disparate technologies, scaling factors, security, and energy to build an IoT solution that not only works but provides value to their company, customers, and shareholders.
Many IoT projects fail or are stuck in R&D for two reasons. First, building a robust system is difficult from a security and robustness perspective. Second, often is the case that an IoT solution technically works, but it is not manageable from the perspective of the purchasing IT manager. As we place more things on the internet, we as architects need to consider the enterprise and industrial IT world is a 50-year-old mature industry. Placing an IP address on a lightbulb is certainly possible, but not necessarily manageable from the customer perspective. This book attempts to address the IoT from an enterprise/industrial/commercial perspective rather than a hobbyist perspective.
This book covers IoT from an architectural and holistic point of view from sensor to cloud including all the physical transports and transformation between the two. Because this book is an architectural guide, it attempts to maintain enough depth to teach another architect the constraints and discipline of an underlying system. There are countless books and tutorials on IoT specifics, such as MQTT protocol, cloud design and DevOps, power and battery design, and RF signal analysis. These are all important components for an IoT system, and a qualified architect should be able to span the breadth to design a robust system. However, the architect must understand when to pull up from design details to continue to provide value as an architect.
It isn't expected that a reader come to this book with an inherent knowledge of every engineering domain. This book touches on radio frequency signaling, power and energy, and circuit theory. On the other side of the aisle, the book goes into internet protocol programming and cloud provisioning. Finally, it will dive deep into machine learning applications such as convolutional neural networks. Having all the skills to bring these technologies together is an architects function. This book helps you get to that level, but it doesn't expect you to come with a deep understanding of each science.
What you can do with IoT is incredible as it will usher in the next major revolution in manufacturing, healthcare, government, and enterprise. It will have major impact, yet inevitable, to the world GDP, employment, and markets. It also poses the greatest challenges and risk in security as you will learn.
Of those thousands of jobs listed, many are for IoT architects, technologists, and principals to build IoT solutions rather than widgets. This book will help you learn and apply technologies for those types of projects.
Additionally, it’s fun. Designing a device for monitoring your home lighting or controlling thousands of streetlights in a city from the other side of the globe or on an airplane is a significantly powerful technology, made for techno-junkies but applied by architects.
