The devices used in the Internet of Things are going to require management and monitoring. As the number of these devices is expected to be very huge, the tools used have to be able to manage and monitor thousands and perhaps even millions of devices. Here we try to explain how it is possible and why it is needed.

Device management Tool

In the middle of all the hype, staggering forecasts and various other things, a very simple idea is very apparent that the complexity of the IoT framework will experience profound growth in the immediate future.

It is a connected world of billions of IP-enabled sensors and machines. These devices communicate among themselves and with other control systems, the exchanges consisting of small amounts of event-driven data transfers.
The challenges that the IoT framework poses, mainly security and privacy related, can be overcome by proper management and monitoring. This can be achieved with one or more tools, as has been suggested by some experts

Essential functions of a device management tool

Key issues to consider

Large amounts of data

IoT represents an issue of scale – large number of devices, sensors, wearables, automobiles etc. are going to produce massive amounts of data. This data, when considered in aggregate, poses a significant threat to the networks and systems monitoring it. For example, a company begins to implant wireless sensors in cattle to prevent the spread of diseases from contaminated products. Suppose each animal transmits about 100MB of data every year. The number of cattle in the world is around 1.5 billion, thus taking the amount of data collected every year beyond the word massive.

In the coming years, enterprises and service provider networks will experience a tremendous rise in the amount of data they will handle. If the performance monitoring system is not able to scale intuitively and cost-effectively with this data, there is a risk of visibility gap in the infrastructure.

The following problems arise for the monitoring platform in case of massive data:

• Prediction of the impact of the failure of any given device to application service delivery across the architecture is difficult.
• Frequently monitoring things is not possible. Every activity happens at sub-minute levels.
• The data for historical reporting and capacity forecasts can be inaccurate.

To overcome these drawbacks, an approach is to build a performance monitoring platform engineered for speed at scale. This practice will lead to the abandonment of products built around a central database architecture that might fold under the massive data. A platform based on a distributed computing model is viable solution. It will keep the performance data distributed across the network and better handle the data generated by IoT solutions.

New Devices and Protocols

IoT will be one of the major drivers in moving data center investment forward. Organizations will invest more in connected devices, sensors, data warehouses, more efficient computing power and hybrid data center/cloud solutions. There are expected to be around a trillion connected devices worldwide in the upcoming years. In addition to the challenging volume of data produced by these devices, network and IT teams will also have to monitor the performance of the devices. This will need them to consider IoT friendly protocols which do not compromise on security. You can read more on the importance of investing in IoT here.

Network Traffic

In the coming times, as the number of devices increases, it will no longer be acceptable to monitor network traffic in five minute intervals as is the normal practice. The nature of this kind of IoT traffic needs closer scrutiny. Polling cycles will become shorter and shorter as the monitoring tools average the total traffic. The need for a platform capable of high frequency polling is already being felt.

Cloud Reliance

To support the billions of connected devices, a large number of application servers will need to be deployed. The cloud presents itself as an obvious solution for companies designing and manufacturing IoT solution systems that require backend services.

Cloud services offer customers varying levels of control over assets and services. This presents performance monitoring challenges.

IoT has been referred to as the “third wave” of Internet evolution. It takes the world beyond mobile access that connects around two billion people today. It is now not a question of if, but how soon IoT will have a material impact on global enterprises and the service provider market.

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