Future Perspective: Cloud Connectivity in an IoT World

In the Internet of Things (IoT) world, you need to understand and exploit opportunities in the rapidly evolving core connectivity domain. To ensure that products will realize IoT benefits, plans and roadmaps must include connectivity requirements, activities, and projected costs. Steven Woodward shares perspectives from communication industry standards—NIST, TM Forum, QuEST Forum, ISO/ IEC, OMG, and ITU-T. He describes the NIST Cloud Carrier Framework that clarifies where the carrier and communication activities fit into the cloud and IoT ecosystem. This model defines the connectivity available for software-defined networking and network-function virtualization. Steven demonstrates the challenges we face as information communication technology moves toward big data and highly interconnected things. The IoT revolution places connectivity directly on the critical path because no reliable solution is possible without a connection to the cloud or to the things being managed or accessed.