IoT Interoperability and Multi-Platform Integration
Tags: programming, software, develope, coding
Published: 2022-09-07 10:34:59

Introduction
Numerous facets of life have improved because of the internet of things (IoT) revolution. The IoT is being used in a wide range of industries, including healthcare and agriculture. The majority of the job can be completed by the physical equipment with very little involvement from humans, as opposed to needing their input. All that is required is for people to configure the devices, issue commands, or provide access to data.

Big companies have invested in the IoT market. The following are well-known vendors:
– Amazon (AWS IoT).
– Cisco (Jasper).
– IBM (Watson)
– Apple (HomeKit)
– Google (Brillo)
–Microsoft (Azure IoT)

By selecting such third-party IoT platforms, you may simplify the process of integrating IoT with your equipment and assuring security. There are hundreds of different IoT platforms in the market which indicates that IoT is a promising technology. However, each of those IoT solutions has its own ecosystem, which consists of its own proprietary protocols, interfaces, and IoT infrastructure (silos). The inability to merge multiple devices due to their incompatibility with one another due to disparate standards, formats, and semantics makes things difficult and expensive.


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### **An overview of IoT interoperability and Multi-Platform Integration.
**
The ability of various IoT systems to communicate data and utilize that data is known as interoperability. We must want all of these platforms to function together without any issues. Different systems must be able to communicate with one another, exchange data, and utilize some of one another's services.

Why do IoT interoperability and Multi-Platform Integration matter?
Application developers have to work harder since IoT platforms are incompatible with one another. The task of creating cross-platform apps that operate on several platforms may grow more difficult and expensive as they must adjust their products to each platform's unique API and information models.

If a service provider has relied on a single IoT solution for a long time, making modifications to their service might be expensive and even dangerous. Additionally, it might be difficult for small businesses to support all platforms with various interfaces. According to a recent research by McKinsey, IoT interoperability may enhance the advantages to the industry by 40%.

classification of IoT interoperability.
To get a better understanding of interoperability, it’s worth classifying it and seeing it from different perspectives.
Device interoperability:
In the IoT, it might include:

- High-end gadgets that are intelligent and have sufficient resources to do some computations (i.e., Raspberry Pi, smartphones)

- Low-end devices have few resources and power requirements, such as sensors and actuators.
Despite the fact that Bluetooth, ZigBee, and other communication protocols may be used, we can add new devices to any IoT platform, and they should be able to communicate information.
Platform interoperability:
Operating systems, programming languages, and access controls are widely available for devices. For instance:

Swift in Apple's HomeKit

- Brillo using Weave on Google

-Embedded C and NodeJS SDKs are used by Amazon AWS IoT.

This makes it challenging for developers to create IoT software that is cross-domain or multiplatform. An illustration of how a cross-platform and cross-domain app may link to the wearable sensor user health platform to track people's health (health-care domain) Additionally, this application has access to a smart-city portal where users may purchase tickets for bus and train stations (transportation).
Semantic interoperability
Different systems could provide data in well-known formats like JSON, XML, or CSV, but the schemas might not be compatible. Making various IoT systems able to communicate information despite their differences is referred to as semantic interoperability. Network interoperability and syntactic interoperability are other subcategories of IoT interoperability.

 Multi-platform integration
It is difficult and costly to make devices from different IoT platforms with diverse natures interact successfully. Semantic-based integration is one potential remedy. The following is a wonderful illustration of how combining several IoT systems is necessary to create a chatbot application that controls the building information:

-The sensing service: Sensors gather data on the climate, occupancy, CO2, and humidity. They are connected to various building areas, including workstations, cubicles, and offices.

-A floor mapping service provides a digital map showing the locations of each level's rooms, desks, offices, etc.

Conclusion
In conclusion, for the market to significantly advance, an increase in IoT Interoperability and Multi-Platform Integration is critical. While forcing the consumer to continue with the incompatible platform may help IoT platform providers for a while, it hampers the creation of the ideal Internet of Things where every device can connect. Currently booming, multi-platform integration enables app developers anywhere to create applications that target a variety of people and extend horizontally across several domains.