The IoT is in position to become one of the greatest application performance management challenges faced by IT. APMdigest asked experts across the industry for their recommendations on how to ensure performance for IoT applications. Part 4, the final installment of the list, covering communication and the network.
Start with Top Recommendations to Ensure Performance for the IoT - Part 1
Start with Top Recommendations to Ensure Performance for the IoT - Part 2
Start with Top Recommendations to Ensure Performance for the IoT - Part 3
19. THE NETWORK
The network makes the application possible, so having a reliable, robust and secure network is the best way to ensure performance of IoT applications. There are a variety of technologies that are being attempted for IoT networks but many will eventually fall short because they will be unable to evolve to deliver the performance that will ultimately be required. Cellular delivers fast speeds at a premium cost for bandwidth-intensive devices such as mobile phones, but cannot offer ubiquity of coverage and the optimization of power consumption – both critical attributes for IoT. Relying upon low-bandwidth high-latency tower-based technologies is dangerous, due to architectural capacity limitations. By using a mesh architecture, one can optimize for cost, coverage, scalability and reliability. A modern mesh architecture also offers increased reliability as use of the network increases because each new device broadens coverage and enables alternative pathways for communication. Finally, security is a key element of any high-performance application, and a layered, defense-in-depth approach, should be leveraged.
Don Reeves
CTO, Silver Spring Networks
20. PEAK TRAFFIC
IoT performance depends on both the availability and ability for the application infrastructure to support the number of devices and types of communications in the IoT solution. IoT is more dependent on harmonic communications where updates are sent at regular and fixed intervals. The application infrastructure must be able to deal with the peak communication patterns during these intervals in terms of volume of data and number of simultaneous connections. This is not unlike the localized surge in traffic experienced during major sporting events that occur on a regular basis (i.e. NFL matches).
Frank Yue
Director of Application Delivery Solutions, Radware
21. SEPARATE FROM BUSINESS NETWORK
A large IoT deployment can overwhelm and clutter a production network, simply in the number of devices and addresses used. Consider putting IoT devices on separate VLANs or separate wireless LANS and keep them firewalled off from your business network.
Jim Cashman
Senior Product Manager, Ipswitch
22. MULTI-SOURCE CLOUD MANAGEMENT
We tend to think of performance management as how people interact with applications, but IoT is about how things interact with things that interact with even more things, with a personalized human experience at the center of a tangled web. This new human experience creates a veritable ton of data in order to make our lives richer. For example, Oculus Story Studio is making virtual reality films you can interact with, Verily is working on a glucose-detecting contact lens for diabetes monitoring, and Moov one-ups fitness trackers by introducing real-time coaching to your workout. These devices create data that needs to be monitored and can introduces stress to the network. To handle this high-frequency data you need to introduce a distributed model for monitoring and embrace a multi-source cloud management strategy.
Shayne Higdon
President, Performance and Analytics, BMC Software
23. STANDARDIZATION
The lack of standardization for IoT protocols and security slows down communication for IoT devices, as messaging between the end devices and central infrastructure needs to be translated, encapsulated, encrypted, or all of the above multiple times along the path. Each time a message needs to be processed, this additional handling adds latency to the communication, degrading the IoT application performance.
Kimberley Parsons Trommler
Product Evangelist, Paessler AG
24. MACHINE-HUMAN COMMUNICATION
Many of us agree that IoT is one of the next big things which will have a significant impact on IT operations. Today, many focus on the sensor-device or sensor-monitor communications, protocols and security, but what happens when something wrong is detected or when the performance is deteriorating? In situations where human lives may be at risk or disasters imminent, I believe it is critical to think through the end-to-end use cases and pay special attention to the machine-human communication layer. Think about multi-modal notification, shift support, and escalation to ensure "someone" can take the appropriate action to fix the issue in a timely manner, should the issue be related to a pacemaker or a critical part of the engine of an airplane in air.
Vincent Geffray
Senior Director of Product Marketing, IT Alerting & IoT, Everbridge
The Latest
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping industries around the world. From optimizing business processes to unlocking new levels of innovation, AI is a critical driver of success for modern enterprises. As a result, business leaders — from DevOps engineers to CTOs — are under pressure to incorporate AI into their workflows to stay competitive. But the question isn't whether AI should be adopted — it's how ...
The mobile app industry continues to grow in size, complexity, and competition. Also not slowing down? Consumer expectations are rising exponentially along with the use of mobile apps. To meet these expectations, mobile teams need to take a comprehensive, holistic approach to their app experience ...
Users have become digital hoarders, saving everything they handle, including outdated reports, duplicate files and irrelevant documents that make it difficult to find critical information, slowing down systems and productivity. In digital terms, they have simply shoved the mess off their desks and into the virtual storage bins ...
Today we could be witnessing the dawn of a new age in software development, transformed by Artificial Intelligence (AI). But is AI a gateway or a precipice? Is AI in software development transformative, just the latest helpful tool, or a bunch of hype? To help with this assessment, DEVOPSdigest invited experts across the industry to comment on how AI can support the SDLC. In this epic multi-part series to be posted over the next several weeks, DEVOPSdigest will explore the advantages and disadvantages; the current state of maturity and adoption; and how AI will impact the processes, the developers, and the future of software development ...
Half of all employees are using Shadow AI (i.e. non-company issued AI tools), according to a new report by Software AG ...
On their digital transformation journey, companies are migrating more workloads to the cloud, which can incur higher costs during the process due to the higher volume of cloud resources needed ... Here are four critical components of a cloud governance framework that can help keep cloud costs under control ...
Operational resilience is an organization's ability to predict, respond to, and prevent unplanned work to drive reliable customer experiences and protect revenue. This doesn't just apply to downtime; it also covers service degradation due to latency or other factors. But make no mistake — when things go sideways, the bottom line and the customer are impacted ...
Organizations continue to struggle to generate business value with AI. Despite increased investments in AI, only 34% of AI professionals feel fully equipped with the tools necessary to meet their organization's AI goals, according to The Unmet AI Needs Surveywas conducted by DataRobot ...
High-business-impact outages are costly, and a fast MTTx (mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) and mean-time-to-resolve (MTTR)) is crucial, with 62% of businesses reporting a loss of at least $1 million per hour of downtime ...
Organizations recognize the benefits of generative AI (GenAI) yet need help to implement the infrastructure necessary to deploy it, according to The Future of AI in IT Operations: Benefits and Challenges, a new report commissioned by ScienceLogic ...