Horizontal IoT Platform EMULSION

Abstract

This article presents an overview of an Internet of Things (IoT) platform design based on a horizontal architectural principle. The goal in applying this principle is to overcome many of the disadvantages associated with the default design approach which, within this context, could be classed as “vertical” in that the IoT system and service are usually designed as stand-alone “silo-like” entities on their own autonomous platform. In a pure sense, each new IoT system and service is a new design ab initio. With the “horizontal principle”, the goal is that in the creation of a new IoT system and service, the provider needs only provide or adapt relevant architectural elements within a horizontal slice of an existing IoT architecture to enable the delivery of the desired IoT service. This article shows how embedding the horizontal principle into an IoT platform design brings the benefits of system design efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility, together with at least the same scalability attributes inherent in the existing platform, an easily accessible adjustment, fine-tuning, and an openness to new use cases and application scenarios. The vision is the enabling of the realization of a potential multipurpose use of the IoT systems and services built on top of such platforms. The article presents a selective survey on the state of the art in IoT domains of application and in IoT platform architectural design solutions and lines of development from a vertical–horizontal categorization perspective. It presents examples of both IoT platform design solution types in use today. Within the context of strongly recommending the application of the horizontal design principle, the multitiered structure of the authors’ own EMULSION IoT platform based on this horizontal principle is presented in detail in the final part of the article.