The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of physical objects that can be discovered, monitored, controlled, or integrated with by electronic devices communicating over various networking interfaces and eventually connecting to the wider internet [1].

In an IoT project, there are always several competent professionals in the industry we are working on (Retail, Pharmacy, Mining, etc.), as well as engineers who are very knowledgeable about the electronic gadgets required to do the work.

As an experienced Solution Architect, I usually join these projects to help integrate devices and their middleware with IT systems within a corporation, ensure smooth data traffic and storage and improve the reliability of the whole ecosystem.

Occasionally, I join the project when it has already started, and I must propose recommendations and next steps on the existing solution and architecture before releasing it into Production.

Here there is a set of slides made for a retailer, Vanilla Corporation (the name is fictitious), to improve the reliability and governance of an RFID [2] solution, which was going to be integrated with the customer’s IT systems to use the RFID data for inventory, reporting, provisioning points of sales, etc. You can use these recommendations to plan an IoT project initially or support you in reviewing an existing architecture. Even though this is for an RFID solution, you can use it as a starting point for any other IoT project.

[1] Dominique D. Guinard, Vlad M. Trifa. “Building the Web of Things”. Manning. 2016.

[2] Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) is the use of radio communications to identify a physical object. Daniel M. Dobkin. “The RF in RFID. UHF RFID in Practice”. Newnes, Elsevier. Second Edition.