Now you have this platform that allows you to share business logic, and algorithms up and down the solution stack which gives you tremendous flexibility. As Oracle improves the platforms, you automatically see the benefits. This allows you to focus on your logic while Oracle focuses on better performance, functionality, and scalability. M2M Now: Even when those twin barriers have been overcome, some IoT enabled services that seem wonderful in the pipeline can still fail to be cost-effective. This seems to be a constant challenge. DH: For early IoT services or solutions, cost-effectiveness was somewhat subjective. Obtaining information that wasn’t readily available; such as the temperature or the location of something,and you were able to realise direct business benefit –then you had a win. The cost of this solution would be weighed against not having the data at all and the benefit seemed obvious. However, the question is what happens over time? How much does it cost to maintain that solution? More importantly, how much does it cost to evolve that solution? I think IoT solutions are a bit like eating a packet of crisps; you have one, you get one piece of data, and then you just simply want another piece of data. And modifying that solution in place becomes really expensive when it is hand crafted. For example, we talked with a partner that was working on an automated parking solution. The goal was to look at a parking space, is it available? Can I transfer the data to some central server so that people who are looking can buy a parking spot? That is a great solution on its own merit. Then the city says, “Well, I have all these sensors at work, can you tell me the temperature or measure the rainfall at this spot?” That is a good idea, there is infrastructure in place, there is a device there. The question is, how hard will it be to modify? That is really the issue for long term cost-efficiency. A point solution may be fine, but they won’t be a point solution for long. Everyone is going to want to know more. M2M Now: Are the cost pressures that can hamper profitable service delivery in modification?
M2M Now
DH: Yes, again going back to the platform discussion, let’s use some examples. We have set up this IoT solution; “Where are my trucks? I am a crisp delivery business, and I need to know where my trucks are, because if I need to divert one, I want to pick the one that is closest.” So, you have collected data from a GPS module, you’ve sent that location to a server, which connects it to a map and gives you a picture on the screen showing you where all the trucks are. Now the mechanic says, “Can I also know how fast it is going on average? Can you look at the tyre pressures?” To do this you have to modify that device, or add another inside the truck. If you have got a device that has a particular OS or development environment, you probably have a software team that handles it; they are going to have to do some work to make changes and collect more of this data. This is not particularly hard, but now you need to look at the gateway. It is a different operating system, tool chain, and device. You are going to send the data to the back end which, of course, has the IoT development team. You put the first solution in place and everything is great, but now we want to modify it. Now there are three different teams to coordinate, collaborate, and share information back and forth. The testing is really the killer. Testing and maintenance costs escalate tremendously, because you may have individual environments, you might have an integrated environment. If something goes wrong, who figures out who is at fault? Then you have to fix it and then you have to deploy it. So it quickly spirals out of control, and what happens is the answer comes back, “Sorry no, we can’t deal with the tyre pressures, it is too hard.” If you are using a platform-based solution such as we propose with Java, you can have Java running on all of those devices. You can have one team working on the full solution. If you want to collect more data it is much more manageable, much easier to maintain and to test. M2M Now: Dave, are better organisational processes as important as better platforms? DH: Yes, I think you have got it right. Of course we support and develop a wide range of standards, not only for the back end business integration side of the world, but for the device side in terms of communication and data format. ▼
When you create a Java application, you can run it without change across multiple different devices. So you can leverage business logic or algorithms, or just interface code across a wide range of devices, from the device side through the gateway, to the server side.
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