Book Description

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most hyped concept in today's technology world. However, with so much hype, still there is a lot of confusion on what does Internet of Things actually mean and what it takes to build IoT applications and how to apply it in various industries. There exist many definitions on "Internet of Things" and even getting on to a same terminology and definition seems difficult nowadays. We have seen multiple definitions over a period of time, such as 'Internet of Everything', 'Internet of your Things', 'Internet of People' and the list goes on. They all mean the same, so let's start with a simple definition of Internet of Things. "Internet of Things is a vision where every object in the world has the potential to connect to the Internet and provide their data so as to derive actionable insights on its own or through other connected objects" The object can be anything - a vehicle, machinery, airport, city, people, phone or even a shoe. From a connected vehicle solution, you can understand the driver behaviour and vehicle usage patterns, from a connected machines solution you can determine when do machines need servicing, from a connected airport solution you can understand many things like - how much time the passenger needs to wait for check-in and security, from an operating perspective it could help to optimize the passenger movement and ensure the right equipments are available at the right time to ensure quick serviceability and finally say, from a connected footwear solution you can understand how much you have run so far and your app can automatically purchase a new pair of shoes based on the remaining shoe life. As we can see, it's not just about connectivity, but how to use the connected data in context of your application or for that matter other connected solutions to derive insights which can't be uncovered before. Today we are seeing data (both structured and unstructured) growing by leaps and bounds available through mediums like blogs, social media, transactional systems etc. With advent of IoT, you will see a large volume of raw data emitting from devices like sensors. Such huge and complex set of data, if not attended to, can go wasted and opportunity lost in terms of building smart environment around us. While focusing on issue of addressing this web of complexity, often understanding the real benefit of IoT is lost and most importantly how to get started on IoT. In this book, our focus will be to provide a clear vision on IoT and everything you should know to get started on applying and building Enterprise IoT applications in any industry. The concepts listed down in the book are applicable across industries. Till date, it's difficult to find a single perspective of what does an Enterprise IoT stack actually mean and our intent is to provide an applicability guide that can be taken as reference for building any IoT application. In the course of the book, we would describe some of the key components of Internet of Things through our Enterprise IoT stack. We would look at how to incrementally apply IoT transformations to build connected products in various industries. At the end, we would understand the technical strategy and how to build IoT applications using IoT cloud offerings from Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon and even build one using open source technologies. To summarize, as part of the book we would cover the following - * A detailed overview of key components of Internet of Things and most comprehensive view of an Enterprise IoT stack. * How to apply IoT in context of real world applications by covering detailed use cases on manufacturing, automotive and home automation. * Understand the technical strategy and how to implement IoT applications using Microsoft Azure and IoT Suite, IBM Internet of Things Foundation and BlueMix, Amazon IoT and AWS services and various open source technologies like Apache Kakfa, Apache Spark and map it to our Enterprise IoT Stack.