Book Review: Building the Internet of Things

Maciej Kranz’s book on IoT is very comprehensive, business-focused, and well-articulated coverage of IoT: one of the most impactful technological trends of the 21st century.

This book is not just about the technology of IoT or more specifically the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). It is a book about the digital transformation that is being realized through IoT. The author articulates quite clearly it is not Internet of Things connectivity for its own sake. It is rather the business value, the use cases, and connectivity opportunities (e.g. OT-IT) that is driving this transformation.

“These use cases, and the business value propositions they produce, drive the connectivity, not vice versa. We aren’t connecting things just for the exercise; serious value and benefits are at stake. That’s why you’ve read this book”

I did not realize that is why I read the book, but the message came through loud and clear — better than any other book on the subject.

There were actually several interesting surprises. I was glad the author contrasted the transformation potential of IoT to those of Business Process Re-Engineering as well as Lean and Six Sigma (actually they are complimentary). He indicates clearly: “Unlike them, you can’t ignore IoT and still expect to thrive or even survive.” Thus the impact of IoT will be significant, provided organizations focus on business problems and solutions — not the underlying connectivity technologies. He considers IoT as a vehicle for change — and that is quite impactful. The best way to achieve this change is through business processes involving connected devices. Couldn’t agree more!

The author is an excellent communicator and the book has many examples of successful IoT projects from various industries, as well as pitfalls and common mistakes — emanating from the author’s rich industrial experience at Cisco and elsewhere. It is easy to read and provides a solid foundation for Business, IT, and Operations — to help them focus on IoT enabled changes in business processes. The author also provides several prescriptive and methodical suggestions on where to start, what to look for and overall what are the best practices for IoT initiatives. He clearly separates the hype from the achievable business value.

“I firmly believe that for many of us IoT represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redefine our industries, organizations, and jobs.”

The author is pragmatic, experienced, and balanced. So it is not about hype but on practical business opportunities. The book is rich with examples and references — including a dictionary of acronyms.

Here are some other highlights that I found quite stimulating:

• Business Processes and IoT: The author mentions and illustrates one of my all-time favorite reference architectures: the IoT World Forum reference model with business processes as the top (hence most important business value focused) layer. “IoT technologies are organized as a technology stack that moves up from physical devices at the bottom through data and applications, and finally processes.” To get the most out of IoT, the author encourages the reader to focus on integration with the business processes that involve connected things. The author has found often the culprits in failed or challenged projects are not the technology — but the lack of business focus: “your first IoT payback begins by connecting your existing devices … to your existing IP network and adjusting your existing business processes to take advantage of things now being connected and inter-connected.”
• Co-Economy and Co-Innovation: IoT and especially IIoT is huge. Organizations who were yesterday’s competitors need to work together on common standards and testbeds. The author elucidates several emerging requirement, standardization, and interoperability initiatives such as the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), ODVA, Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), OpenFog Consortium (OFG) and many more. The emergence of testbeds showing interoperability within reference architecture stacks is quite significant. Capturing this new era of cooperation he has coined the terms “Co-Economy,” “Co-Creators,” “Co-Development,” and “Co-Innovation.” In the words of the author “Our traditional roles will quickly evolve from buyers and sellers to co-creators, from competitors to collaborators, from technology providers to business value creators, and from resellers to solution integrators.”
• AI and Machine Learning with IoT: Connected devices generate enormous amounts of data. Various AI and machine learning algorithms could be used to realize predictive and adaptive solutions. The author covers both Fog Computing with real-time analytics capabilities as well as several AI and Machine Learning examples — for instance Self Learning Networks (SLN). Fog computing is essential for Operational Technology — Information Technology integration. It is used to “bring more cloud-like capabilities ‘closer to the ground.’” SLN leverages cognitive algorithms for intelligent and self-adaptive networks, using predictive analytics: — “a wide set of machine learning algorithms are used at the edge of the network, which constantly learns network traffic patterns in order to build mathematical models.”
• Customer Engagement: At the end of the day it is all about connecting to your partners and customers in end-to-end engagements. The author touches upon important customer experience transformation potentials and the emergence of usage-based models in different industries: the shift from capex to opex! Analytics can also be leveraged to optimize the customer experience. IoT also provides opportunities in engaging customers — with your connected products as well as services. In industries such as manufacturing, individualization and customization are pervasive trends and here also IoT provides opportunities for innovations in the customer experience — for products as well for shopping experiences — placing the consumer in the driver’s seat.

As a final thought on this impactful work (a New York Times best seller): Generation IoT (another term coined by the author) is coming and will be ubiquitous: “within 10 years, you’ll have new and different business processes, go-to-market strategies, pricing and delivery models, support and service models, and staffing and employment models — all due to IoT.”

So I strongly recommend you get your own copy of this book — you will be using it as a reference and a tool for your digital transformation initiatives for many years to come. No one can afford to ignore IoT. Maciej hits a home run with the message: “The challenge for observers is that IoT has no precedent either in terms of the opportunities it presents or the risk it creates.”

Review appeared originally on: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/book-review-building-internet-things-setrag-khoshafian