Enabling control of millions of connected devices is a tough task for connectivity management platforms (CMPs) which has only been added to by the arrival of flexible SIM options, such as embedded and integrated SIMs. On top of this, the growing maturity of IoT means we’re now entering the era of mass-scale IoT. That means billions of devices now need to be managed efficiently, writes George Malim.
Connectivity management in IoT can’t be a one-size-fits-all option because there are so many different approaches to IoT deployments and many conflicting needs. A global deployment needs connectivity to be consistent in multiple markets while national or regional deployments have a more limited number of choices to accommodate. Some use cases demand high security or low latency or both while others are fine with best effort low speed connectivity. CMPs must offer a management path for each extreme and do so in a way that is easy to use and cost effective.
Research firm Berg Insight has reported that CMPs are diversifying to reflect different dynamics. Developments in the domains of network virtualisation, SIM technology and low power wide area (LPWA) networking are currently driving a shift in the market towards a greater diversity of IoT connectivity management services, the firm says, reporting that about 67% of the global installed base of 1.74 billion IoT SIMs were managed using commercial connectivity management platforms at the end of 2020. Acceleration of deployments as markets exit pandemic constraints is well underway, although inflation and recession may slow the pace slightly into 2023.
“CMPs are crucial when it comes to managing large scale IoT deployments, ensuring devices are always connected to the network and that the connectivity is reliable and consistent,” says Michael Setton, the IoT platform lead at Connexin. “In the utilities sector for example, deploying thousands of water meters in a single week, would be a challenge without a CMP in place. The other benefit is that any hardware or software related issues on a network can be diagnosed remotely making the process of keeping devices connected on a 24×7 basis easier. CMPs also offer more functionality such as optimising ever evolving security considerations or adding new functionality, for example related to device power optimisation.”
It’s a challenge of both scale in itself and the breadth of requirements deployments place on CMPs, confirms Ed Porter, the director of IoT Solutions at IMS-Evolve. “IoT is a very broad industry and, as a technology, it is being utilised in many different ways, from connecting cities together to connecting whole retail estates or more simply for smart lighting,” he says. “As an industry it is only trending upwards, with the number of connected devices set to grow to 29 billion by 2030. All of this means the quantity of data being produced is set to rise to astronomical levels, which legitimately calls into question the economic and technological viability of CMPs.”
Larry Socher, the senior vice president of Strategy and Alliances at Eseye, acknowledges that scaling up is an industry-wide challenge but thinks harnessing innovative technologies such as machine learning will help CMPs meet the market’s needs. “Today, organisations can right-size, change and optimise connectivity as their requirements, the market and technology evolve,” he says. “The Eseye Infinity IoT Platform ensures organisations can deploy and secure virtually any type of IoT device globally, to any network with confidence, solving the problems of carrier lock-in, connectivity and security through a single solution. In order to help scale, Infinity recently introduced machine learning to help with the increased complexity of selecting, managing and optimising connectivity, which complements a rules engine for orchestrating connectivity. Together they eliminate the need for human involvement by automating activities.”
Porter scopes out how CMPs will need to improve to meet the requirements of specific industries using the example of the food retail industry. “For the food retail industry, solution providers must have the capability to connect to large volumes of assets across many sites in order to pull significant amounts of data points together at speed,” he explains. “With the desire for data only growing, it is imperative that providers have the ability to effectively collect and handle extensive data sets from an ever-growing number of sites and assets. To truly grow with their customers’ requirements, there can be no cap on maximum capacity. In addition, this ability to scale must be achievable on-demand, for example following a new acquisition, the opening of more stores or the addition of new machines. CMPs are often inefficient when it comes to handling that many data points and, in an increasingly connected world, they risk becoming increasingly obsolete.”
“A more practical solution for businesses will be to utilise an IoT solution that not only has the ability to collect, normalise, process and translate real-time data from assets, but that also actively monitors and manages data to drive efficiencies, take corrective action and drive automation,” he adds. “We’re already seeing this type of strategy being utilised within the food retail space: due to the food retail industry operating with such small margins, retailers simply can’t afford to run a CMP as a separate piece of technology, instead relying on plug-and-play options that deliver out of the box business cases at speed and scale.”
Setton sees the need for management platforms to encompass more than connectivity but sees them remaining horizontal rather than becoming targeted to serve the specific needs of vertical sectors. “An IoT offering is a complex assembly of devices and processes and only a fraction of the solution components are purely related to a given business case,” he says. “For example, in the cases of utilities or smart cities, dashboards and data management or integration can be customised to either focus on billing, reducing energy costs related to street lighting, all with the objective of providing decision makers and city planners with more granular insights. Whether it’s tracking waste collection, handling water meters or managing air quality, the wide variety of use cases could be better managed via a federation of platforms. Thanks to the increasing availability of serverless applications, software-as-a-service and application programme interfaces (APIs) all the data can be brought together into a cohesive single end-to-end solution.”
Socher sees the value of a unified management platform for all aspects of IoT but fears the sheer complexity of IoT connectivity renders this unrealistic. “Ideally, there shouldn’t be a different management platform for connectivity, organisations should be able to access an all-in-one-place, single IoT platform to manage all aspects of their IoT initiative,” he says. “However, given the incredible difficulty in managing global connectivity, specialised connectivity management platforms such as Infinity have emerged. Given the importance of managing the full-stack of applications, data, compute, storage, OS and security, Infinity has been designed to offer a rich set of RESTful, batch and push APIs to expose connectivity selection, management and optimisation to higher layer services.”
“In addition to managing and optimising global connectivity, it enables customers to manage existing legacy SIMs as well as eSIMs and iSIM solutions,” Socher explains. “With our Infinity IoT Platform we can offer bring your own contract (BYOC) capabilities that enable customers to import existing mobile network operators’ (MNO) contracts into the platform. This puts organisations in complete control of commercial decisionmaking and enables them to customise network connectivity options to meet their requirements, while at the same time allowing them to bring negotiated rates from their existing carriers.”
There is an opportunity to invert the argument that CMPs should become part of a wider, more comprehensive IoT management platform and suggest the CMP could become the foundational platform for IoT enablement to which additional functionality can be integrated. “CMPs will need to adapt from solely providing connectivity to helping customers handle multi-protocol or multi technology IoT deployments which is a big and costly challenge,” says Setton. “With a greater variety of data types, fast diffusing wireless communication technologies, CMPs will need to adjust to an eSIM and iSIM world in which switching CMPs and managing your IoT fleet and private networks, will become almost as easy as changing a SIM card in your mobile phone today. A shift to more reliance on software defined radios coupled with DevOps automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will allow IoT providers to streamline and strengthen the processes to manage security, detect and fix problems and guarantee service level agreements. They will embark on a path to standard operating procedures (SOP) and outcome-based contracts.”
Willingness to adapt will be the key to success for CMP providers, says Socher, as eSIM and iSIM transform IoT organisations’ approaches to accessing connectivity: “eSIM and iSIM deliver flexibility to accommodate different connectivity types, thus enabling users to switch easily between networks. They are solving the interoperability challenge, effectively putting control and choice in the hands of the enterprise and breaking the 40-year lock-in with MNOs. The power has switched from MNOs to the enterprise, with proprietary relationships becoming a challenge of the past. CMPs need to recognise that enterprise customers will have different needs and priorities to operators and will be seeking tailored solutions that support their specific use cases.”
“A new breed of MVNO will be needed to help mix, and match different technologies and operators, and finally provide true global device-to-cloud connectivity keeping control in the hands of the enterprise,” Socher adds. “This next-generation MVNO must go well beyond aggregating and reselling cellular roaming.”
That new breed of connectivity provider will be reflected in the expanded capabilities of CMPs. “Organisations will be looking for platforms that can provide high value end-to-end solutions, not just connectivity,” confirms Setton. “These will include everything from helping them select best of breed hardware or high-performance databases, deploy or upgrade software and manage software versions or handle new business models for tens of thousands of devices deployed over a period of five-to-ten years.”
CMPs will increasingly have a wider impact that goes beyond connectivity. “As IoT matures and CMPs continue to provide end-to-end solutions there will be dedicated teams to manage each network function as they require different skill sets,” Setton adds. “They will also need to understand their customer needs better. To handle exponentially growing data volumes, customers will also benefit from the capacity to scale or shrink the network. For example, in transportation, if trains do not operate between 1am and 5am every day, you don’t need to have 15 servers running like they do at peak times, you can utilise these servers in other areas, bringing cost savings and increasing the efficiency and sustainability of private networks.”
CMPs therefore won’t disappear but they will change shape. “While some of the focus of CMPs may disappear as the market evolves, they will shift in focus from provisioning and managing SIMs to the overall selection, management and connectivity over multiple radio access technologies and network providers,” says Socher. “This will require machine learning and a world-class IoT platform to handle the complexity of simultaneous optimisation across multiple device constraints including availability, reliability, bandwidth, latency, signal strength, cost, power and security that can be tailored to meet application needs and data flows. CMPs will also ensure IoT is secure and compliant, delivering reliable, low-latency device-to-cloud connectivity security and routing. Customers also benefit from support for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), data sovereignty and other regulatory requirements.”
“CMPs are absolutely crucial for IoT estates to scale and evolve with the market. In fact, our State of IoT Adoption Survey 2022 highlighted that IoT success is fuelling further expansion,” adds Socher. “78% of survey respondents expect to increase the number of devices in their IoT estates in the next 18 months and larger IoT estates anticipate the strongest growth, with 95% expecting IoT estates of 100,000+ devices to expand further; CMPs are fundamental to enabling this. In fact, 32% of respondents surveyed said a single platform for all IoT connectivity would make future IoT initiatives even more successful.”
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