What’s the impact of IoT on cloud infrastructures?

The web and cloud is largely built on a client-server architecture and has evolved to support new clients, from the initial PC desktops and laptops, to the latest mobile terminals – smartphones and tablets.

As the IoT emerges and most of the traffic will be generated from machines-to-machines (instead of humans-to-machines), the cloud is also adjusting to the constraints of this new client computing and networking domain.

In the cloud itself, large-scale data generated by the connected – more-or-less smart – IoT devices will be processed with the existing BigData infrastructures and technologies.

Differences come at different levels : whether devices are connected directly or indirectly to the Internet, whether data is processed in the cloud or locally (fog computing), the networks (likely limited) those devices use when connecting directly to the Internet, the communication protocols used (unlikely to be HTTPS), the cloud services delivered to those devices beyond data collection, storage and processing.

Hence, new categories of cloud platforms dedicated to serving IoT needs are emerging, with already more than 400 players, coming from the IT or telco world but also from the industry, as well as many new startups.