AWS IoT Architecture

Patterns for Internet of Things (IoT) architectures are still emerging as the field matures and businesses increasingly adopt cyber physical systems. Trek10 is a pioneer in defining these patterns as we design and implement solutions for dozens of clients across various industries. We use the concepts described in this page to guide projects for our clients and even in the development of our productized offerings.

What are the components of an IoT Architecture?

We break down IoT ecosystems into five foundational components that revolve around cloud-based data insights–as we believe these insights is where the true value of the IoT resides. The five components are:

1. Device Connectivity and Communications–deals with how to connect IoT devices to, and enabling data exchange with, the cloud. This involves activities like implementing connectivity on embedded devices using solutions like FreeRTOS or the AWS IoT Device SDK, developing gateway device applications using AWS IoT Greengrass, and configuring cloud-side AWS IoT services to manage devices and data exchange streams.

2. Data Ingestion and Processing–defines the infrastructure necessary for ingestion, delivery, transformation, and aggregation of data. It involves services like Amazon SQS or Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for batching and AWS Lambda and Kinesis Data Analytics for real time data filtering manipulation.

3. Data Storage–determines how data is stored and replicated for different applications such as Machine Learning, sales processing, and real time alerting. It presents the choice of data storage solutions to host IoT data ranging from SQL databases for ad-hoc querying to object stores like Amazon S3 for massive data archiving.
   

4. Data Access–includes any mechanisms used to expose IoT data to front end applications, analytics dashboards, or third party services. This could be, for example, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for application development, VPC Peering to integrate with other AWS accounts, and data queues to be accessed by external systems.

5. Shared Resources–are all of the assistant services to the main data-driven infrastructure. This includes CloudWatch Logs, AWS X-Ray, and third-party monitoring solutions like Datadog, with whom Trek10 is a Gold Tier Partner.

How Trek10 Can Help

Through delivering projects for a variety of clients in the restaurant, medical, environmental, smart city, and government sectors–among others–Trek10 has gained world-class experience in bringing IoT ecosystems to fruition. We provide services to advise, design, build, and manage any and all of the five components listed above. Whether it’s through a design session, a end-to-end delivery engagement, or on-call support, Trek10 is ready to help you deliver on the promise of IoT!