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246 A Common Architectural Approach for IoT Empowerment
Similarly, BUTLER [2] insists on existence of domain-centric smart solutions,
and aims at developing a horizontal solution in order to enable the
development of secure and smart life applications.
iCore [3] addresses two key issues in the context of IoT, namely how to
abstract the technological heterogeneity that derives from the vast amounts of
different objects while enhancing reliability and how to consider the views of
different users/stakeholders for ensuring proper application provision.
IoT6 [4] aims at exploiting the potential of IPv6 and related standards
such as 6LoWPAN and CoAP to overcome current shortcomings and fragmentation
of the Internet of Things. Its main challenges and objectives are to
research, design and develop a highly scalable IPv6-based Service-Oriented
Architecture to achieve interoperability, mobility, cloud computing integration
and intelligence distribution among heterogeneous smart things components,
applications and services.
The same issue is at the foundations of the iot.est [5] project. They see
current implementations of Internet of Things architectures confined to particular
application areas and tailored to meet only the limited requirements
of their narrow applications. Their take in order to overcome technology and
sector boundaries to be able to design and integrate new types of services and
generate new business opportunities is a service creation environment that
gathers and exploits data and information from sensors and actuators that use
different communication technologies/formats.
This list is clearly incomplete, and looking through each and every project
belonging to the IERC Cluster it’s possible to find a similar analysis, if not the
same, The aim towards a solution that helps federating current developments
and creating a synergistic environment for the developments of future services
and applications is definitely mainstream within the EU-funded projects in
the area.
Is this result achievable? With the “cream” of EU research converging
on this aim, the answer may seems obvious at first glance. What is more
important to see, though, is at what level a convergence can be achieved, and
which design choices will make all future developments interoperable.
At times of writing, it seems very unlikely, if not clearly impossible, that a
single design pattern will be used for all envisaged applications. The diversity
of application domains provide totally different requirements that are solved by
a number of different heterogeneous technologies. It is unrealistic to conceive