Developing Interoperability Principles to Unlock Value from IoT

I recently took on the role of Chair for the IoT Alliance Australia (IoTAA) Interoperability Workstream. This is what the IoTAA calls an "enablement" workstream - one of the horizontal enablers underpinning the work done in the vertical workstreams. Interoperability is certainly an enabling concept, and one that carries with it a number of ideas of what it actually means.

The way we often describe it is "to more easily enable data to be used where it creates the most value for the end consumer" - or how data moves from generation to consumption. The technical steps to make that happen are topics for other discussions, but it's important to understand that interoperability is not simply a technology problem.

With many of the customers we work with, we often see that the journey towards "solving for interoperability" actually starts well before any a technical discussion. It can be about how various stakeholders, business units, teams, corporate strategies and business priorities need to find ways to work together at the organisation level.

We're seeing this play out within certain industrial segments, where new positions are being resourced to sit between the OT (SCADA, factory automation, etc) and IT (IoT, business apps, cloud) teams to work on making the org chart, as well as technology stack, more interoperable and to try and break down the various silos within the business.

So how do organisations start to design for interoperability as they embark on important digital transformation programs of work?

One of the first deliverables for the Interoperability Workstream that I'm facilitating is the development of a set of "Interoperability Principles". Rather than a "best practices guide", these principles will look at the building blocks of driving interoperability across technology, but will also likely touch on the people and organisation elements as well.

We're currently gathering interest from workstream members to participate in this project - if you're interested in getting involved or just knowing more, feel free to reach out or join the IoTAA Interoperability Workstream at https://members.iot.org.au/

Watch this space for updates on our progress!