Google Cloud IoT Platform Framework: Build IoT Solutions With Niveus!

The Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining traction in almost every business and industry. However, most people don’t realize what it means or how broad the term is. The Internet of Things (IOT) architecture is not just one IoT solution. IoT solutions will differ from business to business and from use case to use case. Here we outline the key building blocks of Google Cloud IoT platform framework, its architecture, and address the 4 building blocks of any IoT architecture i.e., functionality, scalability, availability, and maintainability.

What is IoT or Internet of Things?

Let’s start with the basics. Internet of Things is the connected devices, vehicles, buildings and other items that are capable of connecting to the internet. This is a very broad definition and can cover everything from your pacemaker, to your coffee maker, to your office thermostat and more. The Internet of Things is the network of physical devices, machines, and sensors that are embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and connectivity to enable these objects to collect and exchange data. The idea is that you can connect all of these things to the internet – thus allowing you to monitor or control them from anywhere. 

How can an IoT platform help your business?

IoT is a growing trend with a lean towards uses in smart homes, smart cities, smart cars, smart industry, smart energy or smart health. The IoT is all about bringing devices online and giving them the ability to connect and exchange information with other devices. This ability to share information between devices will help us in many ways, from the increased automation to the greater convenience of being able to access information from your mobile phone.

Here are a few features every IoT device carries –

Functionality – Modernize processes and operations, bring new features and services for clients.

Scalability – Ensuring the integrated IoT solution can grow with the business, is a need that businesses can not ignore. 

Availability – Securely and remotely access IoT-connected devices, its data helps evolve and streamline processes.

Maintainability – IoT solutions need to be maintainable and sustainable past its initial integration to gain multifold RoI

Niveus’ Google Cloud IoT Platform Framework

Here’s a walkthrough on how our IoT solution works for businesses –. 

Identifying key components and workflows: For building a real-time streaming system from source to target, our solution leverages some of the top GCP and Open-source tools, including:

• • Google Cloud Platform as the Cloud Service Platform
  • BigTable as the primary real time Database
  • Bigquery as the Data warehouse tool
  • Apache Beam with Java, with Dataflow as the pipeline builder and runner respectively
  • Pub/Sub as the messaging service
  • Google Cloud Function for event based triggers
  • Google Cloud Storage as the Storage Layer
  • Redis/Redis enterprise for In-memory state and lookups

Google Cloud IoT Solution & Model

Building a data lake and API platform in the cloud: By integrating with the IoT core, our data lake and API platform setup on cloud caters the user to receive real time updates and aggregated information from the omni channel in a secure manner.

Identifying infrastructure capabilities: With in-depth understanding of how each component of the solution works, we can identify the infrastructure’s capabilities and what it does. 

• • The data is initially sent from the connected devices to the IoT core. IoT core helps in easily and securely connecting, managing, and ingesting data from globally dispersed connected devices
  • Google Pub/Sub or Kafka would act as messaging brokers to facilitate the data exchange between the producers and the subscribers in a streaming environment
  • A stream processing pipeline via Dataflow to collect data from IoT core source. Google Dataflow is ideal for processing large amounts of data in an streaming environment and can be used to process anomalies, derive aggregates and store the data in Data Lake 
  • A business rule engine in CloudSQL to dynamically update the streaming pipelines with the rules based on specified time in a day. These rules would be applied on the incoming data which would be used to trigger alerts
  • Google Cloud Function, a  scalable, pay-as-you-go tool, for any events or anomalies that need to be reported to the user on the fly
  • Redis for any In-memory state and lookups to help in a high throughput environment as redis has low latency.
  • Google Cloud Storage as the Storage Layer, for archival data, with the appropriate retention policy.
  • Data is currently sent to the server using MQTT protocol that provides secured channel of communication

Security Strategy: Laying the right protocols for application security, network security, data security, monitoring and logging access and control. This includes VPC, Cloud Amour, Load balancers, and more.

Niveus Case Study – TVS Motors

At Niveus, our IoT solution was adapted to build a telematics Google Cloud IoT platform with real-time monitoring and analytics for TVS motors.

With our IoT-powered solution, TVS is rapidly transforming how its connected vehicle users are interacting with the company and improving its customer services. Within its connected ecosystem of car owners, garages and auto parts suppliers, TVS is innovating the way their drivers are tackling on-road and operational challenges with its telematics IoT platform.

With its in-built monitoring and alert system, drivers can be kept abreast of potential problems and what to expect enroute including accident prone areas and more. TVS garages can also predictively stock their inventory as per forecasted requirements from vehicles on road. The garage management system connects every garage, facilitating maintenance history tracking and improving customer interaction. 

The world is moving to a point where everything is connected and the only way to participate in this is by having a solid understanding of how this technology works.  If you want to learn more about Niveus IoT Solutions & Framework, please email us at biz@niveussolutions.com