systems of automation wil

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Systems Of Automation Will Enrich Customer Engagementby Jeffrey S. Hammond, February 27, 2014

For: Application Development & Delivery Professionals

Key TaKeaways

systems Of automation are an Important Part Of Modern applicationsWhen it comes to building modern applications, systems of automation are an important complement to systems of record and systems of engagement. They provide real-time data and connectivity to the physical world, thereby providing additional context for improved decision-making.

Building systems Of automation Requires New Development skills and TechnologiesSystems of automation have different requirements for safety, network latency, and message delivery. Since custom hardware is often involved, you must get the solution right the first time or risk expensive recalls or updates. IT shops should monitor and adopt new, emerging standards in software and hardware and refine their development processes.

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For ApplicAtion Development & Delivery proFessionAls

why ReaD ThIs RePORT

How will companies use modern applications to enrich customer engagements? In short, by exploiting context. Creating customer context means aggregating information from mobile devices, tapping information stored in systems of record, and, increasingly, analyzing operational data generated by connected products or physical infrastructure. This report examines the new development dimensions introduced by these systems of automation and how they relate to systems of record and engagement. Integrating operational context from connected products will prove challenging for traditional IT development shops, as it requires new technologies, architectural topologies, and skills. Here are the new services, protocols, frameworks, and hardware that development shops should track as they prepare to tap connected products for the operational context that will become an important source of differentiated customer value.

table of contents

The age Of The Customer Demands a 3D Modern application Response

sOa architecture and Deployment Vary By application

recommenDAtions

Get Ready To Integrate systems Of automation Into Modern apps

WHAt it meAns

Operational Context Is The secret Ingredient In Customer engagement

notes & resources

Forrester interviewed 19 vendor and user companies: 2lemetry, Arm, Axeda, Bosch, connectsense, cynergy systems, Devicify, electric imp, eurotech, iBm, Kaazing, libelium, oracle, salesforce.com, sierra Wireless, skookum Digital Works, the eclipse Foundation, and thingWorx.

related research Documents

mapping the connected Worldoctober 31, 2013

mobile needs A Four-tier engagement platformoctober 18, 2013

the Future of mobile Application DevelopmentJanuary 17, 2013

systems Of automation will enrich Customer engagementmodern Applications need operational contextby Jeffrey s. Hammondwith christopher mines, John r. rymer, and rowan curran

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systems of Automation Will enrich customer engagement 2

© 2014, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited February 27, 2014

The aGe Of The CusTOMeR DeMaNDs a 3D MODeRN aPPlICaTION ResPONse

The age of the customer is upon us. Customers are picking up smartphones and tablets seeking a compelling, contextual experience, whether for media consumption, financial transactions, or personal communications. Engaging, informing, and anticipating such customer needs creates a generational shift in software architecture and development processes.1 Modern applications demand multichannel clients and are built on elastic infrastructure, with elastic licensing; they’re composed of multiple service endpoints that are quickly provisioned by developers using direct customer feedback about their convenience.2

Customers Crave Multiple Contexts — Can you Provide Them?

Today we see many application development shops rightly focused on building infrastructure for brand-new systems of engagement — mobile and tablet apps and responsive web applications that are connected into existing systems of record. Successful shops are building four-tier engagement architectures that aggregate information from multiple service endpoints, remixing that information and packaging it into a customer-centric bundle and distributing it across public Internet and carrier infrastructure.3 As a result, customers quickly access what matters to them — their orders, their offers, and their accounts.

But there’s a problem with this approach — it assumes that all the data a customer cares about is either resident on their own devices or already stored in existing systems of record. It assumes that no new, external information is arriving that changes the relationship or what customers might want from a business. In an increasing number of situations, that’s simply not the case: Operational data gathered in real-time (or as close to it as possible) is a key part of the customer value proposition (see Figure 1). When operational context is unified with two other dimensions — a customer’s local context and historical context — it enables a more intelligent (and more valuable) set of engagements or experiences.

Look beneath the surface of businesses based on ground-breaking modern applications, like Uber, Waze, and TripIt, and it quickly becomes clear that it’s not just their great-looking mobile apps that create a convenient experience. These digital businesses also depend on real-time dispatching of cars, up-to-the-minute reporting on traffic conditions, or active monitoring of travel itineraries to create a connected, convenient experience. And when it comes to connected products like a Nest thermostat or a Fitbit Force, it’s seamless connectivity to climate data and calorie counts that completes the customer experience. In all of these examples, connectivity between systems of engagement, record, and automation — providing three dimensions of context — delivers a more valuable experience and results in substantial creation of value.




Figure 1 Context Combines Local, Historical, And Operational Data

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.111384

Local context

Systems ofengagement

Systems ofrecord

Systems ofautomation

Operationalcontext

Historicalcontext

Location

VelocityIdentity

Direction

Maintenancehistory

Dust level

Past ordersStoresfrequented

Credit status

Scheduledappointments

Density

Temperature

Maintenance status

Pressure

Temperature

Devices in range

ContactsScheduled

appointmentsCamera (video)

Humidity

Radiation level

Pulse

Revolutions perminute

Light level

systems Of automation Connect The Virtual and Physical world

What exactly is a system of automation? We define it as follows:

Systems of automation are technologies that intelligently manage physical products, networks, and infrastructure.

Today developers build many systems of automation to gather and integrate data from the physical world.4 In doing so, they have learned that these systems have particular qualities of construction that set them apart from systems of engagement and systems of record. These connected systems of automation must be:




■ Highly reliable. It can be inconvenient if you can’t get genius recommendations while using a video-streaming application, but it’s quite another thing if a software glitch makes a centrifuge spin erratically out of control.5 Systems of automation tend to have higher availability demands that affect device design and communication protocols. And that expectation of reliability is extending to connected products. Customers expect reliable, accurate, timely communication, whether it’s a Withings scale, a car navigation system, or a connected garage door opener.

■ Provably secure. When systems react with the physical world, it’s important to ensure that data is accessible to trusted parties even as it streams over public networks. Securing transport and command systems is important not just for command and control systems like pumps and electric meters, but also for the personally identifiable information (PII) that Marc Benioff ’s Philips Beam toothbrush is collecting about him.6

■ Designed and tested for safety. When sensors, actuators, or custom hardware is involved, designing and testing for safety is non-negotiable. And it’s not just the obvious issues like electrical safety or unsafe mechanical operation, but also exception path scenarios. As an example, if a car is remotely locked with a command from a smartphone, can it be manually unlocked from inside?7

■ Power and bandwidth efficient. Architects designing systems of record can usually count on a local network connection with a relational database management system (RDBMS) and don’t think twice when designing for a beefy application server. These design sensibilities don’t work when building thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of edge nodes to connect to systems of operation. Network bandwidth, memory, power, and compute are necessarily constrained at the edges of the connected world. That’s increasingly true as low-cost connected products like scales, grinders, cameras, and appliances invade industrial and consumer markets. For example, TCHO Chocolates uses a mobile application to monitor and control small machines in its research and development (R&D) lab so that employees can monitor progress 24x7 without having to be in the labs at the time. The connected devices aren’t overly powerful, but it’s important that commands are accurately delivered so that exacting products are made to the desired spec.

The bottom line for applications development professionals: Unique architecture and deployment considerations for systems of automation make developing them different than building systems of engagement and systems of record (see Figure 2). The balance of this report will detail the most important differences in system of operations technologies, development considerations, and deployment sequences so that application development professionals can prepare for the new demands they bring.




Figure 2 Systems Of Record, Engagement, And Automation — A Development Comparison


Characteristic Record Engagement Automation

Networking

Connectivity

Protocols

Computingarchitectures

Languages

Platform

Refresh cycle

Life-cyclefocus

Ethernet, Wi-Fi Cellular, Wi-Fi Ethernet, Wi-Fi, cellular,ZigBee, SCADA

HTTP, TCP/IP, IIOP HTTP, WebSocket HTTP, WebSocket

SOAP, REST, MQ, JMS,AMQP

REST REST, MQTT, CoAP

X86, Z, Power, RISC ARM, X86 ARM, ATMEL

C#, VB.NET, Java, COBOL HTML 5, JavaScript,Objective C, Java, C#

C/C++, Java

Windows, Linux, UNIX, z/OS,IBM i

iOS, Android, WinRT,BlackBerry, HTML5

Linux, QNX, WindowsEmbedded 8

Two to three times per year Every 2 to 4 weeks

Maintain data andtransaction integrity

Get quick feedback andupdate rapidly

Safety, reliability, andintegration

Once per year for hardware;more often for software

sOa aRChITeCTuRe aND DePlOyMeNT VaRy By aPPlICaTION

The architecture of a system of automation is different from typical systems of record or the new engagement architectures that support smartphones and tablets. Power, network bandwidth and latency, and edge computing capacity are all issues, but there are also new protocols, communication patterns, and solution vendors to deal with.

Connected world architecture Needs awareness, analysis, alternatives, and action

While design and development scenarios vary, make sure to account for the “the four A’s” in the deployment of a systems of automation project:8

■ Awareness. This base layer of connected world systems is where physical meets digital. The edges of any such system are sensors that understand almost any type of physical context like identity, device state, temperature, velocity, sound level, or location — the list of potential inputs is vast and expanding. The power and cost constraints associated with edge node connected world systems means working with some unfamiliar CPUs, including low-power ARM Cortex and Atmel microcontrollers.9 Analog and digital I/O inputs and low-cost integrated sensor circuits allow developers to create alerts or alarms when threshold conditions are tripped.




The second aspect of awareness is how to report the state of an edge node itself over a network. On a private network a TCP socket will do the trick, but security pros won’t be crazy about opening random TCP ports to the Internet to link edge nodes back into existing infrastructure.10 As a result, it’s likely that designers will have only port 80 to work with. Communication options will of course include HTTP, but also new options like WebSockets, SPDY, and WebRTC that are more suitable for low-latency communications.

■ Analysis. This layer of connected world systems includes databases, data management, event processing, analytics, and reporting applications that ingest data from edge nodes. It directly integrates into the aggregation tier of an engagement architecture where it’s integrated with sources and feeds of data that are not directly associated with the assets being monitored or controlled, e.g., weather or social media inputs (see Figure 3).

The major hurdle that traditional development shops struggle with in the analysis layer is the volume of the data that edge nodes emit, and the speed with which it must be processed. As a result, we’re seeing increased deployment of NoSQL database management systems like MongoDB and Apache Cassandra where developers collect data and make it ready for analysis. Vendors including Axeda, ThingWorx, and Xively provide higher-level ingestion as a service that will let developers focus on analyzing data instead of building systems to collect and store it. A more hands-on approach is Amazon.com’s recently launched Kinesis service, which provides high-speed data ingestion, as well as connections to S3, DynamoDB, and RedShift for storage and data analysis.

■ Alternatives. Advanced analytics and decisioning systems will also perform hypothesis testing, scenario analysis, and predictive analysis, creating and evaluating alternatives for consideration and action.11 Coming up with the “next best action” could be as simple as the “if this, then that” (IFTTT) recipes that Belkin’s WeMo uses to trigger simple actions for home automation.12 Depending on the application arena, these tasks can also project or predict conditions into the future. Another option is to integrate a traditional business rules service like FICO Blaze Advisor, IBM Operational Decision Manager, or Sparkling Logic SMARTS that can be modified by nontechnical business users.

■ Action. Connected world systems are ultimately about making decisions and taking action — better decisions and actions that are informed by real-world conditions and analysis of alternatives. This involves sending a decision — autonomic or human — to signal the monitored asset or assets through a return path, a signal that closes the valve, turns on the light, or shuts down the engine. This layer also includes a broader set of actions, including initializing, reconfiguring, customizing, or upgrading an asset or set of assets. It’s important to note that actions aren’t just initiated in the systems of operation; they can occur across all parts of a modern application, an existing application in the system of record tier, a human in the field, or a business process in the aggregation tier.




When an action path includes human interaction, it’s increasingly common for development shops to surface requests for human input through established systems of engagement (e.g., a smartphone or tablet). For example, the new U-Scan error code readers built by Bosch don’t have a screen or any user interface at all. They rely on a Bluetooth-enabled dongle and an iPhone app to inform customers what action they should take when a car has an error code. There’s an additional bonus to this approach: By decoupling a connected product from the system of engagement, Bosch can modify or enhance each separately. In this case it means user interfaces can be regularly tweaked via the Apple App Store while the code reader hardware remains the same.

Figure 3 The Architectural Relationship Of Systems Of Engagement, Record, And Automation


(Alert customer, employee)

Client tier

3. Alternatives

2. Analysis

Systemsof automation

Systemsof record

Systemsof engagement

1. Awareness(Alerts, status)

4. Action(Reset, shut down)

4. Action

4. Action(Log event, schedule

service)

Service tier Serv

ice

tier

Delivery tier

Aggregation tier




Deployment Topologies for Connected world applications

There are three distinct topologies for building connected world applications (see Figure 4). Each has strengths and weaknesses, so it’s important to analyze which approach makes the most sense for a particular project.

■ The connected device model simplifies edge node architecture. In the connected device model, developers connect edge nodes directly to the Internet, typically via an Ethernet port, Wi-Fi, or a modular cellular radio like a Sierra Wireless AirPrime. Analyzing events from multiple sensors and constructing useful alternatives happens exclusively in the centralized aggregation tier, as connected devices lack the compute power and context required to do anything more than act on their own limited state. The aggregation tier uses complex event processing, business rules, programmed algorithms, or direct user input to resolve the next best action, and then relays it back to the connected device, or forwards the actions to user devices in the system of engagement tier or to systems of record for storage.

The connected device model is good for devices that are independent sensors and don’t require a lot of local interaction with other edge nodes. It’s also good in situations where the edge node is in a fixed location, there are good guarantees of network connectivity, and the amount of data captured for analysis is relatively low. As an example, Nestlé uses an Airlink Modem from Sierra Wireless to keep tabs on high-end Nespresso machines that are deployed at its retail customers. Data on pressure, temperature, and stock levels allows Nestlé to provide proactive service to devices before problems result in machine downtime.

The connected device model will become more and more feasible over the next few years as monthly operating expenses for airtime head down to as low as $0.50 a month (at low transmission rates and volumes). Expect a 2G radio to add $10 to $15 to the unit capital cost of an edge node in volume, with higher bandwidth 3G and 4G radios still in the $80 range, but also coming down in price over time.

■ The gateway model merges traditional machine-to-machine (M2M) models. In this model, a local gateway acts as a bridge between the aggregation tier of a modern application and multiple edge nodes that comprise a logical unit of processing capability with a localized “4A” loop (e.g., a car, or a fleet of “pick and place” robots). The gateway model layers processing power and pushes it toward the edge of the network. The gateway itself often provides a number of convenience functions for developers. As an example, a gateway may bridge existing standards-based telemetry protocols like ODB-II and CAN bus or even proprietary protocols.13 A gateway may also intermediate between different devices that are connected to it, providing localized analysis, alternatives, and actions.




This gateway model is particularly useful in situations where human intervention is not required or where a response needs to happen in milliseconds (e.g., automated shutdown of expensive equipment when a maintenance fault is detected). A gateway-based approach is also useful when connectivity to the Internet is intermittent and store-and-forward makes sense. The gateway can use the same Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or cellular radio capability as a connected device, but it can reduce the radio and connection costs via aggregation. Development shops using the gateway approach will need to factor in the cost of deploying and maintaining the gateway itself.

As an example, Libelium’s Waspmote platform for smart cities provides monitoring of a physical environment through sensors for dust concentration, ultrasound, noise, linear displacement of cracks, temperature, humidity, and luminosity. It’s connectable to the Internet via Wi-Fi, 3G/4G, or ZigBee, and it can aggregate multiple edge nodes using mesh networking over 802.15 protocols. Other vendors that can help with connected gateway deployment include Eurotech and Systech.

■ The ad hoc network piggybacks on systems of engagement and record. Commonly employed in the consumer space, the ad hoc model uses smartphones, tablets, or open networks to which devices and sensors can make ad hoc connections and then exchange data. Newer protocols like Bluetooth Smart and NFC allow devices to detect and negotiate connections without human interaction or tedious set-up processes. In the ad hoc network, a smartphone can act as both a system of engagement and a connected device gateway. As smartphones and tablets employ quad- and octo-core chips, their ability to add connected world processing for awareness and alternatives will grow. Another variant of the ad hoc network might use a fixed router that would allow Bluetooth Smart devices like iBeacons or smart cards to register and communicate information as they come into range. In this case the router handles protocol bridging to Wi-Fi or Ethernet.




Figure 4 Connected World Network Topologies


Systems ofengagement

Systems ofrecord

Systems ofautomation

3. The ad hoc network

2. The gateway model

Virtual point of saleGeoFence

Garage dooropenerPhilips Beam

Fitbit

iBeacon

Kiva robot

Seiko Epson robot

Baxter robot

Matternet UAV

ThermostatGE’s myEngines Vending machine

iPhone

Gateway

1. Connected device model

In an ad hoc network,a smartphone acts asa de facto gateway.

New standards, Open source Remake Connected world Development

Application development professionals who are new to connected products will discover that it’s a good time to experiment, as new technology standards and open source software and hardware are remaking a space that traditionally has been known for exotic requirements, proprietary protocols, and specialized tools. It’s now possible to build connected products with conventional programming languages and tools, web-friendly protocols, and commodity hardware. Here are some of the changes to track:




■ Standard protocols improve connectivity. New standard protocols for communication between edge nodes and the aggregation tier are emerging that make it easier for developers to connect a wide variety of devices from different manufacturers (see Figure 5). While RESTFul web services are a favored option (over HTTP) for web developers looking to extend their knowledge into the connected product space, they don’t always have the latency, power efficiency, or delivery requirements needed. Promising alternatives include MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). Microsoft shops should familiarize themselves with SignalR, positioned to connect ASP.NET applications via low-latency connections.

In addition, many connected world development teams are beginning to use WebSockets instead of HTTP to intermediate between edge nodes and their aggregation tiers. The main reason is that the resulting bidirectional communication pipe is better for two-way traffic than a traditional HTTP connection with long polling to the server to check for updates. Moving to WebSockets may require a server infrastructure upgrade, but an increasing number of servers that developers already use support the new standard protocol, including Apache Tomcat, Eclipse Jetty, the Kaazing WebSocket Gateway, and Socket.io.

■ Open source software and hardware reduce entry costs. Open source adoption accelerates as companies build their own engagement infrastructure, including open source frameworks Node.js and Spring, as well as MongoDB, Hadoop, and Cassandra. A similar track of innovation led by open source communities is now occurring with connected products. Examples include open source projects like Eclipse Mahini, Paho, Koneki, and DeviceHive. Perhaps just as important is a set of projects that combine open source software with low-cost and open source hardware, including the Arduino and Arduino Programming Language, the BeagleBoard, and Linux-based devices like the Raspberry Pi.14

It’s tempting to separate these low-end devices from traditional connected and embedded product development and ascribe their popularity to hobbyists and tinkerers. Our research shows that’s not the case — several of the development shops we spoke with use these entry-level boards for basic prototyping and proof-of-concept work, before they take working designs to full-scale manufacturing. The open source hardware movement is also forcing traditional players to reevaluate how they support developers, and the result is a slew of lower-cost edge-processing nodes and tools that are widely available to developers. One example of this trend is MBed.org sponsored by ARM and NXP — which provides free cloud-based development tools and libraries for development across a wide variety of ARM-Cortex-based devices.

■ Rapid prototyping speeds up projects. Most connected systems software is built very differently than systems of record or engagement. Developers may update a mobile app every few weeks, but that’s not really an option at the edge node level of a system of operation. Security and safety concerns and the costs involved with deploying physical edge nodes into the connected world mean that rapid turnover is unlikely, and that multiple generations of devices must coexist.




These concerns have typically led to long development cycles, but that’s changing as product manufacturers include connectivity and more software in their product designs. We see product development fracturing into two phases: rapid prototyping that uses a “minimum viable product” approach to development, and a scale-up phase where traditional volume manufacturing techniques are applied. Some companies are going further by applying product line management techniques to drive the same level of modularity into their software as the hardware components it runs on. As noted earlier, modularity is key to this approach — separating user experience layers, analysis, and alternatives from underlying systems that provide awareness and execute action allows for evolution even after initial product releases, through system updates and federation with other product and services.

A consequence of these changes is that many traditional product or infrastructure engineering organizations will struggle with demands for increased velocity in the same way that software development shops do. As a result, we see third-party organizations, including design agencies and systems integrators with specialized product development practices, playing a more influential role in developing connected products and integrating them into modern applications.15

Figure 5 Most Connected Systems Will Use Web-Compatible Protocols


Connectivity

Edge nodes

Automationinfrastructure

Messageprocessing

tier

Aggregation tier

MQTT CoAP HTML (long polling)

WebSocket HTML

3G/4G EthernetWi-Fi

Service bus

SeismometerThermometer

Proprietary

CAN busAntitheft

Engine

DigitalI/O

SPI

In-cabin

TPM

Dropcam

Gateway




R e c o m m e n d at i o n s

GeT ReaDy TO INTeGRaTe sysTeMs Of auTOMaTION INTO MODeRN aPPs

Sometimes it seems hanging on for dear life is all development shops can do as they grapple with the increased velocity and integration issues that systems of engagement thrust on them. Daunting enough, but here comes another wave of challenges — and opportunities — presented by systems of automation. As customer and employees demand ever more meaningful engagement, expect that you’ll have to do the hard work involved in connecting your mobile apps to the physical world around them. It’s best to start preparing now so that you won’t get whipsawed. Here’s what we recommend:

■ Explore and prioritize the range of contexts at your disposal. As the number of smartphones and connected products explodes, there’s an almost endless array of contextual data at your disposal. Start by going wide and defining all the pieces of information available to the customer, but then quickly sharpen the focus on the pieces of context that matter. Can certain pieces of information be aggregated at the gateway level and a master event be fired off to an aggregation tier on the Internet? Does the customer’s context change slowly enough that external events can be pushed onto their device so it’s cached right at hand, or is the context the customer desires changing so fast that there needs to be a single source of truth in the cloud?

■ Incorporate real-time data into systems of engagement. Look for opportunities to surface operational data in your existing omnichannel development efforts. You’re likely to find that it whets the appetite of your business peers, while helping them understand the importance and benefit of making infrastructure investments to pave the way for deeper integration into existing IT systems and physical assets. It may even get them thinking about how they can evolve your business model from the transactional sale of discrete products into a connected service model that regularly engages customers.

■ Define “4A” scenarios that matter. Start by elaborating the awareness that matters, the analysis that should be performed, potential alternatives, and what actions should be fired back to connected products, over to systems of record for storage, and up into systems of engagement for user interaction. Focus less on the low-level messages and more on the customer value of the scenarios. Consider using UML sequence diagrams or adopting the journey mapping techniques used by mobile developers to document customer interactions.

■ Expand R&D scope to include hardware prototyping. If your software development organization includes a research and development group, work with it to bring in some of the hardware devices mentioned above as a basis for prototyping ideas. If you don’t have the luxury of an established R&D group, tap some of your best and brightest developers and see if they would be interested in a side project to show your business peers what could be done with a bit of research effort — after all, that’s how many current mobile initiatives got started.




■ Acquire and assemble the aggregation tier components you need to succeed. You can’t buy an aggregation tier off the shelf today (although independent software vendors are moving to productize the concept). But many core components are there, if you’re ready to do a little self-integration. Look to include vendors that provide connectivity between edge nodes, and examine their analysis capabilities, but be prepared to provide your own by involving the big data strategists at your firm. Alternatively, you can start with open source projects, standard protocols like MQTT and WebSocket servers, and lash up a proof of concept in a few weeks’ time. But keep in mind that your overall goal is integration with existing systems of record and engagement, so be prepared to connect through web services, application programming interfaces (APIs), and web-based security models like OAuth2. Once you’ve gotten the basics in place, look to add more advanced capabilities like complex event processing, business rules, or business process management.

W h at i t m e a n s

OPeRaTIONal CONTexT Is The seCReT INGReDIeNT IN CusTOMeR eNGaGeMeNT

Great user experience and effective use of local device context are important in engaging customers, but it’s operational context in combination with local context at the device that provides an opportunity to redefine business models and create defensible business value. It’s important to not get so focused on the front end of modern application development that you ignore the operational data and context that makes services like Uber, Fitbit, and Waze shine. Most established businesses have a lot of operational context to start with as a basis for adding value — but it’s locked up in standalone devices and buried deep in their enterprise architectures, with no public APIs whatsoever. As the fight to win and keep customers engaged goes on, it’s access to operational context that will win the day.

eNDNOTes1 For a detailed discussion of the differences in architecture brought about by modern applications, see the

January 17, 2013, “The Future Of Mobile Application Development” report.

2 We detailed the importance of rapid action based on direct customer feedback. See the November 18, 2013, “Measuring Mobile Apps” report.

3 The aggregation tier is perhaps the most critical layer of the new modern application architectures that developers should adopt. For more information about how it works and why it’s important, see the October 18, 2013, “Mobile Needs A Four-Tier Engagement Platform” report.

4 For a more in-depth treatment of the business drivers and taxonomy behind connected world systems, see the October 31, 2013, “Mapping The Connected World” report.








5 In the case of the Stuxnet virus, the actual damage was caused by reprogramming the industrial controllers for centrifuges, making them spin erratically and literally tear themselves apart. It was a scenario that was probably not anticipated by the original designers. Source: David Kushner, “The Real Story of Stuxnet,” IEEE Spectrum, February 26, 2013 (http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet).

6 For more information, see the October 23, 2012, “Prepare Your Security Organization For The Internet Of Things” report.

At this year’s Dreamforce, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff used his keynote to show off a Philips Beam toothbrush, which connects to an iPhone via Bluetooth Smart to upload data on dental hygiene habits. Source: Benny Evangelista, “Benioff ’s vision of connection,” SFGate, November 19, 2013 (http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Benioff-s-vision-of-connection-4994401.php).

7 For more information on how the automotive channel will develop, see the July 22, 2013, “The Connected Car” report.

8 For more detailed coverage of the four A’s, see the October 31, 2013, “Mapping The Connected World” report.

9 For more information on these processor families, check out ARM’s website (http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/index.php) (for ARM) and Atmel’s website (http://www.atmel.com/products/microcontrollers/avr/default.aspx) (for Atmel AVR 8- and 32-bit processors).

10 It’s easy to talk about the connected world as the “Internet of Things,” but that’s not strictly true. That an increasing amount of communication will happen using web protocols over port 80 makes the “Web of Things” a more apt description.

11 For more information, see the May 31, 2011, “Best Practices: Next Best Action In Customer Relationship Management” report.

12 Belkin’s WeMo series of products uses a Wi-Fi network and a mobile device to control home electronics from a smartphone. WeMo also works with IFTTT, allowing simple rules to be programmed by nondevelopers. Source: IFTTT (https://ifttt.com/).

13 The On-board Diagnostic System (OBD-II) emits diagnostic codes for automobiles when an error condition is detected. Most modern cars have a port that allows the codes to be downloaded and read. Controller area network (CAN) bus is a message-based protocol, designed originally for automotive applications but now widely used in other industries for microcontroller communication.

14 The open source hardware movement takes its cue from the open source software movement, providing open specifications for integrated circuits and circuit design, so that hardware can be manufactured by any individual, company, or organization that wishes to do so (and has the capacity). Examples of popular open source hardware projects include Arduino (http://arduino.cc/) and the BeagleBone (http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone).

15 For more information on how we see software development organizations adapting to the demands of connected products, see the January 23, 2014, “Software Must Enrich Your Brand” report.









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