Back to the earliest days of the internet, interoperability was paramount and at the core of the idea. I daresay that is the reason, Internet is now such an extremely powerful tool in connecting everybody, everywhere, thanks to the efforts of the IETF. Imagine how the world would look like if there were twenty different types of internet, each connected internally. Then to talk to all of them, users had to have at least one device of each version, hence twenty devices, or at best the same device but with twenty different protocols and may be an underlying interpreter to communicate with all of them. Same internet solutions could be developed by the twenty providers in twenty different versions! And users of a version were locked with the specific provider for all solutions and could not interoperate with the users of other providers! Now instead of people as users, imagine “things” as users of the internet. This is the interoperability problem with which we are facing for the Internet of Everything: Many providers, each with a different platform, and a fragmented environment of all manufacturers and developers. But how important it is, and where the interoperability, hence standardization should happen, should be studied further.
Issues of a fragmented IoT ecosystem are not limited to ineffective and inefficient implications, or users’ confusion as well as high costs, hence delay in the mass consumerization of the IoT solutions. In such environment with limited supervision on devices, applications and solutions, and no or little certification, the ecosystem is not necessarily secure. Currently the obligation is on the developers and manufacturers, which means that end users are not immune to malicious applications or simply ignorance of the developers. In addition, specific devices may just connect automatically to other devices, which is a threat by itself. Furthermore, the internal networks to which these devices are connected may not be well secured, which means that all devices on that network will be exposed to the risk if any element in the system is flawed or defected.
However, efforts to build interoperability will not be well-received by all parties and players despite the undeniable values. The main reason is, many parties are interested in building their own ecosystem to lock their users and prevent them from using their competitors’ solutions. So, the user will not only be locked in, but also should they chose to switch to another provider/manufacturer, their cost would be potentially high. Even worse, if any data is collected already, it could potentially be useless if the format of the data is proprietary and cannot be used by other parties. The magnitude of the effect will increase exponentially for the IOT solutions and data mining for industries, enterprises and governments, and consequences will be totally or partially burdened by the people and the end-receivers of those services and products. Imagine the historical health information of a patient being unavailable for further analysis and health services due to proprietary format of the data.
The interesting piece of information for providers and manufacturers is that unless if interoperability and interaction among solutions materializes, $4 trillion of annual economic value in 2025 will not be fulfilled. This is 40% of a total $11.1 trillion as stated in a 2015 report from McKinsey Institute. So, even though specific parties may benefit in the short run, but there is absolutely no winner in the long run.
Even the standardization of the IoT seems to be adding to the confusion. Different standardization organizations are developing specifications and guidelines for the IoT across different layers, which sometimes do not agree, and are even conflicting in cases.
But another question also needs to be answered: how important are standards? Are standards required across all different layers and for all four communication models?
In the first two parts of these series of articles, I covered a summary of why interoperability is important in general. In the next parts, I will add a review of the communication models, how important interoperability is for each communication model and why, as well as whether and to what extent standardization is required for each model and on different layers.
References:
https://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/ISOC-IoT-Overview-20151221-en.pdf
http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/business-technology/our-insights/the-internet-of-things-the-value-of-digitizing-the-physical-world
http://www.greenpeak.com/Press/PressKit/2015GreenPeakWhitePaperIoT&CommStandards.pdf