1. LATENCY
If there is a delay between a person passing in front of a moving connected car and the system activating the automatic braking, all this wonderful technology will ultimately have been useless... The latency we currently experience remains an obstacle for many connected objects and machines, and the implementation of 5G will only partially solve the problem.
2. BANDWIDTH
Sending massive amounts of data to the cloud or a data centre can be taxing on bandwidth. Many companies are encountering this problem more and more with bandwidths that send data in both directions.
3. SECURITY
By default, sending data everywhere creates huge security risks.
4. INTRUSION
"Shadow IT" (unknown or unauthorized use of a company’s hardware and software resources by one or more employees) can lead to the creation of loopholes in a system that is believed to be airtight, which certainly increases the risk of cyberattacks.
5. DUPLICATION
Accumulating data and sending it to the cloud necessarily creates duplicates, which waste expensive space. We are going to see more and more selective deduplication directly incorporated into connected objects.
6. COST
Adding security and bandwidth, or even creating separate networks for connected objects, requires major investments that are very difficult to predict with relative accuracy.
7. COMPLIANCE
More and more countries are introducing legislation for the secure transfer of data in their jurisdictions, and many companies are facing compliance issues.
8. CORRUPTION
Even with no tampering, data can become corrupted on its own. Attempts, drops, and missed connections will interfere with data centre connections—a major issue, especially for critical applications.
Edge computing is a viable solution that is gaining popularity. In fact, many think (and I would be the first to say it) that by 2020, more than half of IoT computing will focus on the use of storage, processing, real-time analysis and exploitation near or on the periphery of networks.
We will also see a trend towards another “layer”: fog computing or fog networking. It is a layer between the edge and the cloud that will serve as a platform for communication between objects. This layer uses Hyperledger Fabric as a basis, which has all the features of Blockchain technology and will offer the most advanced resiliency, efficiency and active communication features.
This is something we’ll discuss more in the future.
Bernard Risi