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IoT Services

Any software that query data or interact with a connected object can be considered an IoT Service.

A lot of software fall under this definition, software with different purposes (monitoring, remote control, analytics...) and different user interfaces (GUI, voice, command line, batch...). Software that runs also on different devices (smartphones, pc, cloud servers...) and OSs (windows, linux, mac, android, ios...).

IoT services are the core of the IoT Solutions. They define the user's 'digital experience' with connected objects. Depending on user's role and purposes, different IoT Services should be available.

Services define how object's data are collected and elaborated and which commands should be requested to the objects. Like any other software, IoT Services are designed around the user. They adapt themselves depending on available objects but also depending on user permissions and preferences.

IoT Services handle also user's authentication on behalf of the access control system under the hood of the IoT EcoSystem. Then use obtained credentials to query object's values and send command requests.

User's authentication, communication between objects and services and many other features used by services are provided from the IoT EcoSystem where the service is connected to.

Services types​

Almost any connected object comes with a monitor and control software. Normally it's a simple service that allows object's owner to show object's statuses and execute command remotely. For home appliances this service is normally supplied as a Mobile App for smartphones or tablets. For industrial connected machinery this service can be included in a SCADA program as a plugin or extension.

In other cases, the monitor and control service allow user manage hundreds of objects of the same type. For example, a vehicle tracking device can be shipped in bundle with a web dashboard to help user manage an entire fleet of hundreds of vehicles.

Some other IoT Services act as object's orchestrator.
Those software programs include rules and logic according to which objects must be collaborating.

They can automate object's interactions (M2M) like the basic example: When a sensor from object A reach a preset threshold, the valve from object B must be opened.
Otherwise, they can also collect and analyze data for a while, then send object's commands according to the results obtained from analytics. Such as in a SmartGardening solution, humidity sensors provides data to an analytics software that cross sensors' data with meteo forecasts, finally analytics results can tell the sprinkler system whether to run or not. Like this one, also all ML/AI solutions are based on this principle (collect/analyze/decide).

A perfect example as object's orchestrator is the IFTTT service that do something when configured events occurs (it works also with many IoT objects).

Another IoT Service type is composed by analytics services. Software that collect data from objects and then process collected data to perform various kind of reports.
Depending on their purpose and from collected data, those services can extract following information:

  • environmental stats: to determinate object's working environment, elaborating environment sensors values
  • operating stats: to determinate how object's is working, elaborating object's states values
  • usage stats: to determinate how users interact (digitaly or physically) with object, elaborating object's states values and commands requests
  • behavior stats: to determinate user's activity, elaborating multiple object's states values and commands requests from the user

Another common IoT Service groups is based on vertical solution for a specific working environment. Those services are designed to solve a specific problem or to help user in a specific tasks. Normally we can find this services on the market as all-in-one solution.
For example services like Factory 4.0 platforms provides a set of features to help enterprise monitoring products quality, keep employers safely, improve remote assistance... Many of those platforms are provided as modular SaaS, so you can adopt only some of those available, or add one feature at a time.

Services of this type have the following points in common:

  • can integrate all connected objects present in a specific environment (home and building, office and meeting rooms, production line, agricultural field...)
  • provide different services for different user's roles (end user, supervisor, warehouse worker, operator...)
  • often they provide also the IT infrastructure required to run such services
  • focused on specific problems or tasks

Object's integration​

When a software wants to interact with a connected object, it takes care of what info and what commands can be request to the object. The service must know which values and which action are available from objects, so it can use them properly.
Services can get the object's list to the underlying IoT Ecosystem, normally via an API call to a library or a web service. Once the service know which objects are available and their features, it can start interact with them. Object's values and commands requests are always performed via API calls to a library or a web server from IoT EcoSystem.

Depending on the IoT EcoSystem used by the service, the software can communicate directly to the object or trough other infrastructure components like cloud and local gateways.

With the aim to simplify object's adoption from software, object's manufacturers and IoT Platform vendors provides software libraries to interact with their objects (or gateways). A software can integrate one or more of those libraries, configure them and communicate with correspondent objects.

Those software libraries on software side provide a set of API to list and interact with objects. On the other side they implement a specific protocol and tx/rx data on a network interface. Because of that, IoT Services always require a connection to the IoT EcoSystem available.
Generally this is an IP connection like that one provided via local networks or public internet. So the only requirements is an common IP network interface (Eth or Wi-Fi).

User account​

IoT Services can be considered also as **IoT EcoSystem entrypoint for users.

Many users are already using IoT EcoSystems every day without realizing it. Every time you open Google Maps, you are using an IoT service that display the avg speed of cars in visualized roads.

Not all IoT Services show public data, most of them contrariwise, show reserved info and prevent unwanted access. Differently to normal software, that authorize users to access to their data, those services authorize users to access to their objects. To access to the objects, an IoT Service must use the underlying IoT EcoSystem that provides also an AAA services to authenticate users. The same AAA service used by other IoT EcoSystem components to authenticate and verify user's permission.

Because of those reasons, the IoT Services handle also the user's authentication. There are two common way to handle that from a service.
IoT Services can use a social login provided by the IoT EcoSystem. Many IoT Platforms allow users to create an account and register all their objects under the same account. Then different software can use the social login provided by the platform, to authenticate user's and get access to his objects. So, the service and to the IoT EcoSystem share the same user account. Another way for services to get access to user's objects is to require the permission to the IoT EcoSystem as external service. This is how voice assistants like Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa integrate 3rd party connected objects. You should log in to voice assistant (with Google or Amazon account), then when you add a new object, the assistant software require the access to the IoT EcoSystem. This method requires two different account for each user, one for the service's authentication and another one for the IoT EcoSystem authentication.