Preface

It seems that every day, one can pick up a technology journal or view an online technology article about the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The articles usually provide insights into specific solutions to business problems or how a specific technology component is evolving to provide a function necessary in deploying an Industrial Internet solution.

If you are undertaking one of your first IIoT projects, this book will provide you with the background needed. The authors have attempted to provide both timely and timeless guidance. The IIoT ecosystem is rapidly evolving, and we'll describe some of those changes in various locations in this book. Yet, we also see that justifications for these projects and use cases are falling into repeatable patterns. The overall architecture is generally well-understood and is also largely repeated, even while individual technology components are growing more capable and sophisticated.

The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) provides useful documentation in defining key aspects of the IIoT architecture that the architect must consider. We'll reference the IIC documentation frequently in this book. However, we also felt a desire to provide guidance as to how the architecture is applied in projects as these solutions are defined.

An area of intense interest, as this book was published, is securing the IIoT and the governance of Industrial Internet solutions. In a portion of the book that covers these topics, we’ll provide what we believe is practical guidance and point to the many worldwide, regional, and industry standards that can impact your designs.

Solutions, component capabilities, and certifications around standards are very fluid and will probably have changed between the time we wrote this book and the time you read this. In areas where rapid change is occurring, the content should provide you with a launching point for you to do your own further discovery. We have a lengthy list of sources in an appendix in this book.

The authors of this book work at some of the leading providers of IIoT frameworks and solutions; we have called upon that experience in writing this book, but have sought to do so in a manner that should be largely vendor agnostic.

Our goal is to help you fully realize the complexity and promises of these projects, but also help you gain the experience needed to architect successful solutions. You are probably at an early stage in your journey that will consist of many stages. We hope that you will find the book a useful place to start or add knowledge where you currently have gaps.