Matthew Schaer - June 5, 2017

On May 24th DreamFactory hosted an IoT expert panel discussion.  Moderated by VP of Product Ben Busse and featuring industry experts DreamFactory CEO Bill Appleton and IoT Industry thought leader, Advisor, Analyst and Architect Janakiram MSV. In case you missed it, let me give you the scoop.

The Current State of IoT

First, Janakiram discussed the current state of IoT and how it is being driven by cloud adoption and led by cloud services providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and IBM as well as other key players outside the cloud space like GE and Bosch. Then he examined the Extract-Transform-Load pipeline (ETL) of data which takes data from edge IoT devices and funnels it through an IoT Gateway for cloud ingestion where it can be further analyzed using tools like Hadoop, Apache Spark, and other big data analysis platforms. He also discussed how this data through the use of intelligent machine learning algorithms could be used for predictive and in some cases preventative analysis. Lastly, he discussed how the aggregated data could be analyzed and then visualized using tools like Tableau and Informatica to build elegant and influential BI dashboards for decision makers.

With an understanding of the current state of IoT, Bill discussed the DreamFactory platform and how it is a fundamental tool for working with the IoT stack to move, store and secure this data using an automated REST API generated from nearly any backend data source like SQL, NoSQL or file storage. Then Bill discussed the opportunities DreamFactory presents by being lightweight, portable and capable of installing in dozens of environments.

That’s A Wrap!

To wrap things up Bill and Janakiram took a deep dive into some scenarios using Mosca, MQTT and REST together cohesively as well as how Mosca differs from REST. Janakiram discussed how DreamFactory could be further leveraged in these IoT scenarios through the use of DreamFactory’s server side scripting features to build custom solutions. And then finally, Bill discussed some IoT deployment scenarios using REST, Mosca, and MQTT. He talked about how DreamFactory can help secure and glue these environments together through the use of role-based access control (RBAC), API automation for backend data sources like SQL, NoSQL and File storage as well as how other unique features like data mesh and server-side scripting can bring the sophistication of the IoT stack to the next level! No more spoilers out of me though. Check it out for yourself on YouTube here.