In 2020, there were 9.7 billion devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT), which is a network of connected gadgets. By 2030, that number is expected to climb to nearly 29 billion. The IoT is revolutionizing every business imaginable as it merges the physical and digital worlds by opening up new opportunities, upgrading the consumer experience, enhancing productivity, efficiency, and agility, and facilitating intelligent decisions.
The possibilities of the IoT are endless, from utilizing drones to scan farmlands to tracking items through a supply chain with sensors and RFID tags to providing better financial services using linked user device.
IoT requirements
Yet, before using IoT as a tool for business transformation entirely, organizations must meet a number of conditions.
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For starters, just like other software programs, the IoT needs to be integrated into processes and products.
Second, IoT adoption success is gained through iteration: Because the IoT consists of a wide range of components, businesses must collect data from devices, analyze it, act on the results, and then repeat the process in order to continuously improve the many IoT constituents.
This suggests that businesses must make arrangements for continuing management, upkeep, and updating of the interrelated systems, procedures, and equipment. To verify that all “things” can communicate with one another, they must test everything.
An illustration of a typical IoT testing scenario is provided below:
A device in a healthcare tracking system keeps track of a patient’s vital signs and stores the data so healthcare professionals can retrieve it later. Remote medication or intake modifications can be started by doctors using a computer or mobile device that is connected to the instrument.
This use case needs to have several things tested in order to function properly.
For instance, the usefulness of each device should be evaluated (sends messages, logs data, displays information, etc.). The data moving between connected devices and all of them must be safe. It is essential to check the compatibility of the various operating systems, browsers, devices and connectivity options that are involved. The entire system must also perform at scale.
Remembering the prior illustration, picture the challenge of physically testing a user interface that patients are using to access remotely from their individual (different) devices. A significant device-side barrier in testing and validating an IoT solution, aside from device unreliability and inaccessibility, is the expensive cost.
The need for large resources that are only available in the cloud makes it difficult to properly evaluate an IoT use case on-site in a company.
