Frank Kelly, CTO, Hughes Network Systems
Enterprise IoT Systems Will Transition to the Cloud
For forward-thinking enterprises, data is the key to unlocking new business advantages. IoT devices provide a wealth of data that can be analyzed to better manage systems, create efficiencies and understand customers. The growth of IoT devices within enterprise networks, however, has made managing these systems more difficult. To address this problem, enterprises will transition more of the IoT management to the cloud.
IoT devices managed in the cloud are easier to deploy, manage and access. Most vendors now build IoT capabilities into their devices, which includes a cloud-based platform that interacts regularly with the devices for status and control and also as a secure interface for access and management by individuals. Due to the challenges associated with securing endpoints in a distributed network, direct access to IoT devices can be minimized and replaced by proxy-type access via cloud-based platforms that are often vendor-specific.
This new paradigm for IoT adds further complexity to the enterprise by requiring access to even more public addressable space for IoT management. At the same time, this paradigm simplifies access directly to the device which is only done via proxy through vendor-specific IoT management platforms – making the security profile more identifiable. Consider the evolution of IoT cameras: once reliant on static IPs, these cameras now store feeds locally and route them to cloud-based servers for retrieval when needed. Employees requiring access to these cameras, whether for real-time viewing or historical footage, do so through cloud-server access.
Just as IoT cameras have moved beyond static IPs to cloud-based servers, so will other enterprise IoT systems in 2024.
Go to the next page for predictions from Emerson Test & Measurement BU (NI).