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6.2 Defining a Common Architectural Ground 247
one-size-fits-all meaningful reference architecture able to implement contrasting
needs and specifications. Furthermore, the application domains being so
different, different maturities of solutions in industrial and public take-up of
IoT development lead to a uneven environment.
Just to make one example, some fields such as manufacturing and logistics
have well-established communication and tagging solutions. Business benefits
of fully automated processes have been already studied and analysed, and the
advantages in terms of asset tracking and supply-chain management are clear.
However, the same maturity does not apply for other fields such as domotics,
where business synergies between different actors could develop services with
clear added-value benefits for the end-users.
While quite logical at this early development stage, this situation needs
a clear change in order to foster the necessary advances. As in the networking
field, where several communication solutions were developed at an early
stage, to leave place to the now universally adopted TCP/IP protocol suite, the
emergence of a “common ground” for the IoT domain and the identification of
reference architectures will lead to a faster, more focused development, where
an exponential increase of IoT-related solutions could take place. These solutions
can provide a strategic advantage to world economies, as new business
models can leverage emerging technological solutions.
The architectural convergence issue has been clearly identified by the
IoT-A project, the flagship EU co-funded project on IoT architectural
development.
6.2 Defining a Common Architectural Ground
The IoT-A project aims at extrapolating commonalities and defining an
abstraction layer that is common to all IoT-related existing architectures.
Therefore, the foundations of its analysis lie on the current state of the art,
promoting an evolutionary approach rather than a clean-slate development.
This has the major advantage of ensuring backward-compatibility of the model
and also the adoption of established, working solutions to various aspects of
the IoT.
Following this philosophy, the project collected literally hundreds of IoTrelated
requirements with the help of end users, organised into a stakeholders
group. Once this work was done, it became clear that a single architectural