Data Spine: A Federated Interoperability Enabler for Heterogeneous IoT Platform Ecosystems.

Rohit A. Deshmukh,Violeta Damjanovic-Behrendt,Dileepa Jayakody,Alexander Schneider

doi:10.3390/s21124010

Abstract

Today, the Internet of Things (IoT) is pervasive and characterized by the rapid growth of IoT platforms across different application domains, enabling a variety of business models and revenue streams. This opens new opportunities for companies to extend their collaborative networks and develop innovative cross-platform and cross-domain applications. However, the heterogeneity of today’s platforms is a major roadblock for mass creation of IoT platform ecosystems, pointing at the current absence of technology enablers for an easy and innovative composition of tools/services from the existing platforms. In this paper, we present the Data Spine, a federated platform enabler that bridges IoT interoperability gaps and enables the creation of an ecosystem of heterogeneous IoT platforms in the manufacturing domain. The Data Spine allows the ecosystem to be extensible to meet the need for incorporating new tools/services and platforms. We present a reference implementation of the Data Spine and a quantitative evaluation to demonstrate adequate performance of the system. The evaluation suggests that the Data Spine provides a multitude of advantages (single sign-on, provision of a low-code development environment to support interoperability and an easy and intuitive creation of cross-platform applications, etc.) over the traditional approach of users joining multiple platforms separately.

Highlights

The rapid growth and pervasiveness of the Internet of Things (IoT) is giving rise to a large number of IoT platforms across different application domains
In order to capable of interlinking more third-party platforms in platforms the future.inTherefore, order to meet the need for incorporating new tools, services and the digital in platform meet the need for incorporating new tools, services and platforms in the digital platform ecosystem, this paper presents the architecture of the European Factory Platform (EFPF) Data Spine, which is designed this paper presents the architecture of extensible the EFPF Data which is designed atecosystem, its core to deliver an interoperable, modular and platform at its core to deliver an interoperable, modular and extensible platform solution
We identified the integration, interoperability, and federation requirements for establishing an IoT platform ecosystem and discussed the design and implementation of a federated platform enabler called Data Spine

Summary

Introduction

The rapid growth and pervasiveness of the Internet of Things (IoT) is giving rise to a large number of IoT platforms across different application domains. The industry trends are changing as a result of the increased digitalization and new possibilities are arising for companies to collaborate, exchange data, share services, reuse existing solutions and create innovative products. Many companies are already under constant pressure to react more quickly to changing market demands to create highly customized and interconnected products, facing the need to “federate” their products and tools/services by offering them through existing digital platforms, or by joining platform ecosystems. The creation of an ecosystem of federated IoT platforms in the manufacturing domain helps companies form agile, ad hoc collaborative networks, establish dynamic supply chains, and optimize production processes to meet new market demands of both Industry.

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Conclusion