and today I'm going to be talking about
a secure and scalable infrastructure for
a commercial IOT now last time I gave
this presentation I it probably looked
something like this a lot of
presentations look something like this
everything is awesome nothing to worry
about work with regatta and all will be
well but this is not the presentation
I'm gonna give today because as we've
worked with more and more companies to
actually move their IOT pilots and
prototypes into production we're finding
is that in a lot of cases they get stuck
so today I'm going to talk about how IOT
is getting stuck as it moves into
production how we're working to try to
get it unstuck with our customers and
prospects and what we're learning from
doing that and a lot of times that means
that we're trying to help them go from
one or two locations to tens of
thousands of locations and understanding
the types of challenges that you run
into when you really deploy IOT at scale
so why what do I mean by IOT is stuck so
specifically what I mean is that
commercial IOT is stuck in some very
particular ways and commercial IOT is a
it's a little different from consumer
IOT and it's also different from
industrial IOT so consumer IOT we're
thinking about things like smart home
and wearables personal monitoring
devices and that's a different a bit of
a different landscape thanks to phones
phones provide the connectivity and
computing that we need for those devices
and on the other end of the spectrum
industrial IOT is a pretty different
animal right we're thinking about
expensive servers monitoring expensive
equipment and expensive factories you
can afford to spend a lot you can spend
a lot on the the installation the
maintenance and the development of those
systems now commercial IOT sits
somewhere in the middle and what I mean
by commercial IOT are things like smart
buildings and connected lighting
tracking important assets figuring out
where
people and things are sensing and
monitoring and even guest experiences
like in restaurants and retail and a lot
of those are going into places with
carpet but going into places that are
office buildings our schools or
restaurants or hospitals and these types
of applications going into these
environments require a different type of
infrastructure you can't rely on
people's phones you need something
that's in the ceiling doing that
connectivity in computing but you also
can't afford to spend thousands and
thousands of dollars on a rack mounted
server to do heavy computing you need
something in every boardroom or every
hospital room every classroom and these
are these are very interesting use cases
these are very ROI driven hard hard
dollar use cases that companies are
excited about often times they come down
to getting more revenue by having
happier guests that spend more money in
order more you might be reducing
operating costs by being able to find
important equipment in the hospital and
and locate it so you don't accidentally
buy another one or not be able to serve
a patient you might be improving guests
satisfaction and a hospitality setting
of providing table service or you might
be just doing a better job of utilizing
the the assets and and the and the
infrastructure that you have but despite
this great ROI potential what we see
across the board is that most of these
efforts get stuck at the pilot stage so
why why are they getting stuck all right
they're getting stuck I would argue for
three primary reasons when the first is
the sheer complexity of it all
who here has launched a a pilot or a
prototype around IOT yeah
what's it complicated it's very
complicated right and and surprisingly
complicated I think for companies that
are doing it for the first time first of
all there's the actual physical
infrastructure of it all so what devices
are we going to use
how are those devices going to connect
to
something like a gateway that can
collect that information then how is
that going to connect to the cloud and
what cloud services are we going to use
how do all those things fit together in
a way that's integrated and this is
often where where companies focus
initially on that pilot or prototype but
once you get past the the actual
technology of it there's the how do i
how do I take that technology and
actually put it into all my locations
I'm talking about 10,000 stores or
20,000 warehouses or 50,000 classrooms
who's gonna do the installation who's
gonna do the monitoring and maintenance
what tools do I need to do that at scale
and how is it gonna evolve right I might
be putting infrastructure into a
hospital to enable asset tracking but
five seven years down the road I'm gonna
want to do lots of things I might want
to help locate staff I might want to
optimize scheduling I might want to
track the usage of consumables so how am
I gonna evolve this infrastructure I put
it in place and make it better over time
and then finally this doesn't happen all
at once so there's a lot of complexity
and how do we go from a prototype that
proves this as possible to a pilot where
we go test this out in one or two sites
or in a few locations and then and this
is where a lot of companies get stuck
how do I roll that out in a way that
makes economic sense and doesn't create
a whole bunch of risk in thousands or
tens of thousands or even hundreds of
thousands of locations so we know this
is a complex landscape this is what we
this is just the kind of discovery
process that we go through with
customers to try to get our arms around
the complexity and figure out how do we
how do we keep them from getting stuck
there so that's point number one
complexity gets us stuck the second is
just the cost there are a lot of
different things that end up costing
money when you get one of these IOT
prototypes especially as it moves toward
production there's the design both the
technical design but also the experience
design and a business case design what
is it we're trying to do and why there's
all the development we need to do
development on the devices we're going
to need
development on the edge we're going to
need integrate with cloud applications
we want to use services that are
reusable as much as we can there's that
deployment the installation
configuration we talked about and then
there's the management so once this is
out there
how you gonna monitor it update it keep
it secure and the issue here isn't so
much that this adds up to so much that
their ROI doesn't work out it's more
that the cost is unknown how how do I
know how much it's going to cost to
install monitor and manage something
that I've never built before and if I'm
putting in an infrastructure that
doesn't look like anything I've built to
date so helping to understand the cost
and manage the cost ends up being a big
big sticking point for a lot of these
pilots as they're looking at going out
into the real world and sticking point
number three is risk the risk of the
unknown the risk of the security breach
the risk of of ending up one of the
worst breaches of 2018 right this is
this is company ending kind of risk
right so it's very hard if the risk is
unknown for a business owner to sign off
on yeah let's go ahead and put this in
in every fast-food store we own or let's
roll it out to every warehouse that we
operate because you can't do that if you
think there's even a chance that you're
gonna end up on the on the cover now
making matters more complicated is that
the number of risks and the nature of
risks are increasing so this is
something that we we track very closely
this is the common vulnerabilities and
exploits database and you can see how
it's been going up year after year and
especially in the last couple of years
as the number and nature of devices have
proliferated this is a fun and also kind
of terrifying database to go roam around
for a while and of the 15,000 32
exploits that they've been tracking this
year alone do they all apply to a given
gateway or Bluetooth router or device no
not all of them but some do and keeping
track of which one apply to exactly my
stack and the devices in the proto
cause I'm using and the authentication
method message or method that I'm using
on my access point that's a lot to keep
track of and it creates more uncertainty
and risk so those three things conspire
together we find complexity cost and
risk to stick a lot of very very good
ideas at the pilot stage so here's what
we've been doing to try to help
companies get unstuck and create pilots
and prototypes that they can put into
production so first I should I should
explain where we fit in this picture so
our job here is the gateways we offer a
gateway platform that is particularly
tuned for connecting lots of different
devices and sensors deploying
applications to that gateway in the form
of Linux contained applications and then
scaling securely so that you can roll it
out to lots of places and keep it all
managed the Gateway itself is a bit of a
Swiss Army knife of connectivity
it has edge compute capability and then
it has some management capabilities I'll
talk about ultimately to reduce the cost
complexity and risk we had to look
differently at the role of a gateway
it's not just a bridge it's not just a
place to connect and compute it's
ultimately the infrastructure that makes
that rollout possible and to someone
good question a few minutes ago it's the
infrastructure that needs to tell you
what needs help and how to manage and
monitor it in a way that's
cost-effective so that starts with
connectivity flexibility being able to
use Bluetooth five thread ZigBee Wi-Fi
proprietary mesh you're going to need to
connect to lots of different devices and
if you're going to roll out to lots of
lots of locations and stay relevant for
years to come you're gonna need to
future-proof in terms of the
connectivity you support so this is a
part of something that that we've built
into the infrastructure to make it
possible for companies to roll out with
confidence the second is and this really
gets to that future proofing and
scalability you're going to run lots of
applications on these gateways you might
be going in with just a location
application
a sensing application that gathers data
and looks for anomalies and chucked it
to the cloud but ultimately once this is
in the ceiling of that hospital room or
it's in the ceiling of that board room
there are lots of things you can do with
it so how do you look down the road at
the ability to run lots of different
applications securely and on that on
that infrastructure and then finally
planning for what is going to be a
heterogeneous cloud environment so there
there it's easier sometimes to bring in
a solution that is a single stovepipe
from device to edge to cloud but those
tend to be purpose-built and you tend to
need lots of them to achieve one or more
business objectives
so embracing the fact that hey this is
an infrastructure we're gonna use with
lots of cloud providers running lots of
applications connecting to lots of
devices is really a more scalable way of
looking at the role of that
infrastructure and that's what we set
out to do with the Gateway itself the
second thing we're doing to help
companies get unstuck is solve the
monitoring and management problem for
them some this ends up being a big big
stumbling block as companies are trying
to go from what's working in the lab to
something that can be deployed and
managed in thousands or tens of
thousands of locations and it's not that
these are unknown disciplines all right
there's a lot to be inherited here from
network management services but but
those typically don't exist in these
early IOT infrastructures so what we
give companies is a way to monitor
gateway status for all my different
gateways deployed all over the world and
all these locations
what's the CPU load what how many
devices and what and what's the
bandwidth of that connectivity
what's the memory usage how do I know
when something isn't scaling correctly
we give them a way to manage updates
updates are simply a part of life with
these IOT infrastructures it is tempting
to think well I'll put it out there
hopefully I'll never need to touch it
but if you look back at the 15,000 new
exploits that have come out so far this
year you're going to have to touch it
you're gonna have to update it needs to
be kept secure and it
gonna need to be done in a way that
doesn't disrupt the things around it so
embracing updates as a way to keep that
current from a security perspective but
also to introduce new features the
ability to run multiple applications and
extend the function function allottee
requires on an updating mechanism and
finally we make available security
patches to address those common
vulnerabilities and exploits so it's
unreasonable to think that every company
with a with a deployed IOT
infrastructure needs to track all of
that themselves and figure out what
pertains to them we do that work for
them so we in partnership with canonical
create patches for common
vulnerabilities and exploits that are
specific to what we're running on the
gateways and what our customers are
running on the gateways and we can
deploy those automatically so they can
choose when to update their gateways and
that it turns out is a big big part of
making the the risk mitigation something
that allows for a large-scale rollouts
as you get toward the process part of
that complexity diagram and away from
the from the technical integration you
start to run in some big questions about
fairly mundane sounding things well how
are we gonna ship it to the location and
when they open it what's in the box and
how long does it take to setup and how
long does the cable need to be if
they're using P OE and on and on and on
and a part of that is creating gateways
that allow for turnkey deployment at
very large scale so the way we're
tackling that and this this is a this is
a recipe is when we when we build a
gateway for a customer it is born with a
secure key and encrypted ID that is
specific to that customer and their
account in the in the management console
so that when that gateway is plugged in
no matter where it's plugged in they
could be plugged in in the ceiling of a
warehouse in Central Europe when it
phones home it knows oh I belong to this
customer I have a secure key I know I've
authenticated so I know that the update
I'm about to get is the right one and I
can automatically provision and config
you're the Gateway so no one has to put
in USB sticks or try to SSH in from a
laptop or do any kind of local
configuration they need to come out of
the box ready to run and then once
they're running we've got that
management console on the back end so
they can be monitored and update and
managed we feel like this is really the
only way to put together an
infrastructure that can be deployed in
minutes not hours or days over tens of
thousands of locations and and really
that's what's required when you're gonna
roll something out at this scale and
then on the subject of security this is
something that really does require
starting from the beginning so we use a
secure element at the point of
manufacture we sign all of the
applications running on the gateway
based on that secure key and encrypted
ID all of the file system and apps are
kept encrypted always at the gateway you
can't be putting gateways out into the
field that have open ports or SSH
enabled I mean these things need to be
hardened right which makes which
requires special management tools in
order to deploy applications to them and
then of course you need the ability to
add those new updates and patches as all
those new exploits come out so this is
not this is not an easy thing but it is
a known thing and so being able to
secure the gateways from start to finish
is a big part of that of that approach
and then finally from a cost mitigation
standpoint we're looking at the actual
cost of the Gateway differently now all
gateways are a little different you
might spend somewhere between six
hundred fifteen hundred dollars for a
traditional gateway but that that
doesn't include the cost of management
monitoring tools or the team that's
going to have to do the patching and
updating around that so we've looked at
this whole thing from a subscription
standpoint so ultimately what you want
is an infrastructure that's going to be
a living breathing thing and you don't
want to pay a whole lot upfront you want
something that can scale as you grow and
that is based on the actual
infrastructure you have deployed so
we've pegged that at about a hundred
bucks a year per active gateway includes
the gateway in the management tools and
the patching and the tools to do secure
updating and
that's included and we're finding is
that that's an easier thing for
companies to budget for and plan for and
digest when they're doing this across
ten twenty thirty thousand locations so
that that's a bunch of different ways
that we're trying to help companies get
unstuck right we're trying to make it
faster we're trying to reduce complexity
trying to increase the scalability and
security of their solutions and we're
learning a lot from the customers who
are taking this approach and we're using
our gateways in in lots of locations to
go from pilot to production so here's
here's some of what we're learning from
these customers what is that there's
particularly strong momentum in certain
use cases so in our world where we're
connecting lots of different sensors
often Bluetooth or low-power wireless
sensors to applications and cloud asset
tracking it's a very very strong use
case control an automation of smart
buildings and lighting systems very very
strong use case and sensing and
monitoring for things like cold chain
applications or to make sure an
environment is kept within acceptable
limits in transit these are the use
cases that are really unlocking
meaningful ROI for companies the other
thing we're learning though is we
implement these these use cases and we
help them deploy to lots of locations is
that something really interesting
happens when you put a scalable
infrastructure into an environment and
I'll use the example of a connected
restaurant here so when our gateways go
into a restaurant there might be the
same gateway used for several different
of these use cases right some gateways
are doing location in based on beacons
so you can do table service others are
sensing things in the in the kitchen or
in the cold in the cold storage to make
sure that food safety is maintained and
in some cases we even have them in the
parking lot so we know when people are
coming up to pick up their orders so you
can run out and get them their order
faster so the gateways could be doing
lots of different jobs but the ability
to have a common infrastructure and the
ability to do two updates means you can
take sort of an agile approach to that
in this case smart restaurant so you
don't have to have guests you know 18
months down the
and then rolled everything out and hope
it works the way you thought it works
and if not go back out and start and
start messing with it you can roll out a
common infrastructure with what's
effectively a software-defined gateway
an A and an almost phone like app
structure and you can deploy different
applications that take advantage of
different sensors and and create new
revenue streams create new value
propositions change the way the smart
worst restaurant works and it sounds
obvious because they you know those
coming from the mobile and the web
development world well of course this is
how you would do it but bringing that
kind of agile development capabilities
to the physical world requires this type
of infrastructure and it opens up some
exciting opportunities and ultimately
that gets us to our vision for for how
this plays out there's a there's a
version of how the IOT is threatening to
take shape which is that every different
siloed application is creating its own
little stack ok we're going to use these
sensors and this gateway to track assets
and put it in this database ok next
we're going to use these sensors on the
on the fridges I'm going to use these
gateways you see where this is going and
and that's almost the path of least
resistance if you're doing a project by
project and asset by asset what we
envision is a shared infrastructure if
you think about this as a secure and
scalable infrastructure from the
beginning you can connect to lots of
devices and use run multiple
applications to get to the cloud should
be able to have one infrastructure and
that can be a shared infrastructure
that's creating value for all the
companies using the applications and
devices that leverage it so that's our
hope for how we can get companies
unstuck and create a secure and shared
infrastructure for IOT in the future
[Applause]