A Distributed Systems Perspective on Industrial IoT

Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) is frequently mentioned as one of the emerging areas in computing that may have a high potential real-world impact in the coming decade. In this paper, we analyze the challenges posed and opportunities offered by industrial IoT solutions from the distributed systems perspective. We focus on the sensing and actuation layer, which results from the the tight coupling of such solutions with the physical objects they monitor and control. We analyze this layer with respect to interoperability, scalability, and dependability, which are key features of many distributed systems.