High-Performance Data Architectures for the Internet of Things

By 2020, more than thirty billion devices would be wirelessly connected to the internet. The Internet of Things have three major components, which include the devices, the networks that connect them and analytics that use generated data. Before data is valuable, it should be converted into an actionable information via complex processing as well as correlation algorithms.

There has been and still much hype on the Internet of Things. The idea of a global interconnected continuum of objects, devices and things in general emerged with RFID technology. Furthermore, this concept considerably has been extended to the present vision, which envisages a plethora of heterogeneous objects that interact with the physical environment. Nowadays, a huge number of different means are used for enabling communication between heterogeneous devices, known as the Intranet of Things, which represent vertical silos that don’t support interoperability.

CURRENT DATA ARCHITECTURE

The current data center paradigm is founded on appliances, which come with mandatory, proprietary software. Software is designed for the hardware and vice versa and come ‘baked in’ together in a package. The configuration is easy to use and convenient. However, as with all things, hardware would fail eventually. Appliances come with redundant copies of costly components to anticipate and prevent failure that is caused by relying on one point of entry. When organizations, in anticipation of growths such as the IoT, start to consider how to scale out data centers, expenses for the traditional architecture skyrocket.

HIGH-PERFORMANCE DATA ARCHITECTURES

To overcome drawbacks, businesses look for alternative storage approaches. Storage that is software-defined is one of the options. By taking features that are found typically in hardware and moving them to a software layer, a software-defined approach to data center architecture eliminates the dependency on server ‘appliances’, with a software hard-wired into the system. This provides the speed and scalability that the Internet of Things demands.

SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE

A software-designed storage is a choice that frees the software from the hardware, enabling administrators to opt for affordable commodity servers. When coupled with efficient, lightweight software solutions, using commodity servers could result in considerable cost savings for online service providers looking for ways to accommodate the growing demand for storage of users. Also, administrators are freed to take into consideration what their businesses really need and choose only the components that promotes further growth of their goals. Although the approach does need more technically trained staff, flexibility afforded by software-defined storage delivers stronger, simpler and more tailored data center for the needs of the company.

DISTRIBUTING STORAGE LAYERS

The distributed approach to storage infrastructure would complement the Internet of Things too. With millions of devices requiring access storage, the present storage model that utilizes one point of entry could not scale to meet the demand. To accommodate the growing ecosystem of storage-connected devices worldwide, enterprises, service providers and telecommunication companies should be able to spread their storage layers over numerous data centers in various locations all over the world. It is becoming clearer that one data center is not enough to meet the storage requirements of the IoT. Storage should instead be distributed in a manner that allows it to be run in numerous data centers all throughout the world.

SCALING FOR THE FUTURE

Each day, humans as well as machines create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. Organizations have to find innovative ways of storing data avalanche while keeping costs down. If they continue using traditional appliances for storage requirements, they would have to purchase more and more expensive appliances, which lack flexibility and prone to bottlenecks. Nonetheless, this is no longer the sole option. Software-defined storage offers a horizontal, scalable architecture to help meet IoT demands, while providing cost savings. The storage option helps organizations handle current requirements while providing peace of mind that they would be able to more cost-effectively and easily handle the storage challenges of tomorrow.

ADDRESS HOW TO PLAN, CREATE AND MANAGE INFRASTRUCTURE

The Internet of Things could change the management and operation of infrastructure. It is important to plan, create and manage the infrastructure. It’s necessary to understand and remain on top of traffic patterns as well as key data to perform analytics in a less distributed and in an effective manner. There should be a plan to move back toward a more distributed computing approach. The challenge with the Internet of Things is to efficiently and securely capture massive amounts of data for actionable insights and analytics to boost the business. Effective data architecture allows the flexibility to architect an Internet of Things ecosystems that’s appropriate for the particular business case with analytics distributed from the edge of the network to the cloud.

The world of smart devices talking to tech other and to people is well underway. However, reaping the business rewards depend on the ability of designing and creating a networking infrastructure that manages the flood of data coming from the Internet of Things successfully.