Performance assessment of integration in the cloud of things via web services

The last years an increasing number of “things” acquires networking capabilities and therefore can be connected to the global Internet infrastructure. The machine to machine (M2M) interactions combined with business processes empower several new innovative applications, changing the way we interact with our physical environment. With the emergence of trends such as cloud computing, it is expected that these cyber-physical systems will harness its benefits such as resource-flexibility, scalability, etc. and not only enhance their own functionality but also enable a much wider consumption of their own data and services. Internet technologies and more specifically web services are expected to play paramount role towards creating this “Cloud of Things”, as most of the coupling is expected to happen via them. We present here some initial thoughts on the “Cloud of Things” and an assessment of example web services and protocols such as REST, DPWS, CoAP, etc. that could be used to realise the vision.