IOT IMPLEMENTATION CHECKLIST

FOR ENTERPRISE
JUNE 20 1 7

2017 KaaIoT Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved. Whitepaper

IoT implementation checklist for enterprise

IOT IMPLEMENTATION
CHECKLIST FOR ENTERPRISE
The IoT technology expands its footprint in all major industries as
forward-looking companies have already moved from the adoption
stage to active implementation of IoT use cases and solutions for their
business. IoT innovations become critical for driving operational
efficiency on the factory floor and boosting consumer products
appeal. IoT-enabled sensors can be found everywhere at oil rigs and
large shopping malls, inside brand new cars, on cell towers, and under
subway trains. The sheer vastness of IoT-sourced data brings to life an
entirely new paradigm of edge computing and analytics. All this
makes the IoT an all-pervasive technology phenomena, inextricable
from every companys IT, as well as business, strategy.

Where is IoT in corporate technology agendas?

The IoT brings along a number of self-sufficient solutions that offer instant value, such as remote monitoring,
predictive maintenance, or location and telemetry tracking. In this regard, certain industries are better
positioned to capitalize on the IoT capabilities from day one of the implementation. They include industrial,
logistics, consumer electronics, healthcare, and agriculture sectors.

Nevertheless, the IoT plays even a bigger role as a key enabler of data-driven operation chains, dramatically
expanding a pool of valuable data sources and providing the means to effectively collect and process that
data. For companies in financial, insurance, retail, or advertising business the IoT opens an unprecedented
opportunity to understand the customers behavior and create precise business strategies based on gathered
insights. In much the same way, equipment manufacturers can tap into usage data and adjust features
accordingly or validate warranty claims.

So, on top of its self-made solutions, the IoT also enables a variety of new cases for Big Data analytics,
customer relationship management, supply chain management, and product lifecycle management.

Finally, the IoT is essential to every companys cloud strategy, especially if the company is well positioned to
provide cloud-based services or enable over-the-top applications for its customers, like in the case with
Telecoms, but the same relates to consumer electronics and industrial equipment manufacturers. Even hotel
chains seize the opportunity to use IoT and cloud-based services to start implementing all-round
personalized guest experience, which is as important competitive differentiator as well-designed
infotainment systems are for modern cars.

All this naturally puts the IoT technology at the top of the corporate agendas alongside their brand-defining
technologies, enterprise back-end systems, data analytics, and cloud applications.

2017 KaaIoT Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

2
IoT implementation checklist for enterprise

IoT implementation challenges

However, to realize a great potential of the IoT at the enterprise level, companies have to prepare for
challenges that they are hardly accustomed to from their previous experience. These challenges are part and
parcel of the IoT adoption and should be addressed upfront in a companys IoT implementation roadmap.

BUSINESS BACK-END
INTEGRATION
INTEROPERABILITY

SECURITY
TECHNOLOGY
EVOLUTION

Security
According to numerous market researchers, security remains a top concern among
executives that inhibits their IoT ambitions. A large majority of those who already
started with the IoT admit existing vulnerabilities and security breaches in their IoT
infrastructure. To effectively minimize the risk for data-sensitive and
mission-critical applications running on IoT devices, it is necessary to ensure that
a secure private IoT technology, secure deployment, either private or hybrid, and
corporate security policies are all in place.

2017 KaaIoT Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

3
IoT implementation checklist for enterprise

Business back-end integration

IoT-enabled devices and sensors allow companies to gather incredible amounts of
new data, but many of them fail to create value from that data. If considered apart
from key business processes of the company, the IoT potential is severely crippled.
IoT implementation can and should support all money-making operations of the
company as well as be extensively used for delivering personalized customer
experience that enhances brand recognition and promotes loyalty. For this purpose,
the utilized IoT technology must be built upon extensible architecture that provides
straightforward integration with data processing, analytics, and enterprise
operations systems. In this case, it will be much easier to bridge new, IoT-enabled
sources of data with the actual business development strategy and key applications.

Interoperability
On the other end of the use case there are hardware integration and compatibility.
A rapidly expanding universe of IoT-primed hardware, connectivity protocols, and
purpose-built smart devices pose a significant test to enterprise IoT strategy. In
most cases, companies will expect their IoT ecosystem to grow in scope and variety,
so the issue of interoperability may become a perennial overhead unless taken into
design from the beginning. This is something which is not too difficult to verify
during the IoT technology selection process, by judging how open the selected IoT
platform is for custom integrations and what type of hardware it already supports.

Technology evolution
By every forecast on how the IoT revolution is going to develop, what we observe
right now is just a tip of the iceberg. Every attempt to set any strict rules and
standards by big commercial technology vendors havent taken root - standards
continue to evolve, and the overall technology landscape is as diverse as it can be.
Since the IoT increasingly becomes a strategic asset for every modern company, the
need for its continuous enhancement and adjustment to new business
requirements is front and center of corporate planning. There is a number of ways
to ensure your IoT technology can keep up with the pace of IoT evolution, and it is
important to give them a green light right from the start.

2017 KaaIoT Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

4
IoT implementation checklist for enterprise

IoT implementation checklist

Considering these major challenges, the IoT implementation is not without a twist to a companys general
strategy. Even though it is possible to roll out fast, tactical IoT projects and have your margin, long-term
success must be taken into account early in the race to ensure consistently growing quality and quantity of
your IoT solutions.

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

DEFINE BUSINESS SELECT IOT PLATFORM ENSURE CONTINUOUS

MODEL AND TECHNOLOGY EVOLUTION

Define top-priority
1 use cases
It is wise to start with some clear business strategy
on which use cases to implement first and which
ones may be due in a longer term. Good
understanding of the initial scope of required
features and capabilities will save you the cost of
implementing unnecessary functionality. At the
same time, a clarified long-term strategy will let
you minimize the risk of lock-in with some limited
or vendor-specific IoT technology later on. Finally,
clearly defined business requirements will let you
get fast through implementation and display better
ROI for your investors.
2 Outline key technology
assets
Business requirements must be in-depth enough to
cover key IoT technology for your initial and
long-term IoT initiatives. Among the major
technology parts are an IoT platform, hardware,
user devices, on-premises and hosted
infrastructure, data processing and analytics
systems, business back-end applications. Make
sure every component is on the list so that their
interoperability and integration is figured out, or at
least validated, early in the design.

2017 KaaIoT Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

5
IoT implementation checklist for enterprise

Clarify stance on Plan

3 technology ownership
Generally speaking, the more strategic is IoT for
your business, the more beneficial it is for your
company to maintain ownership over its custom
IoT technology. Depending on your companys IoT
business strategy defined on the previous stage, at
this point you need to settle on whether you want
freedom and flexibility provided by owned or
open-source IoT technology, or you are willing to
go with a commercial IoT platform as a service and
build your business on some vendors IoT
technology. Fair to say, you can change your way
later on, but that wouldnt come without
technology transfer costs, extra development
cycles, and potentially disrupted workflows while
migration takes place.
4 for evolution
When your IoT business model has taken shape, it is
time to select an IoT platform (in-house,
open-source, or commercial) and verify it can go the
distance. Make sure your top-priority use cases can
be fully supported and that custom functionality
can be implemented within a reasonable timeframe
and budget. The selection process may take some
time and effort, but chances are the selected
technology will become your companys major
business development factor for years to come.
Since an IoT platform is a key enabler, it is the first
on the list, but hardware, an analytics solution, etc.
will need to be decided upon in a similar rigorous
way. You may take into account some extra
thoughts on choosing between open-source and
commercial IoT platforms.

Ensure end-to-end Address security,

5 integration
To address the interoperability challenge, ensure
the selected IoT platform is easily compatible with
different hardware, sensors, gateways, as well as
supports communication protocols that you are
going to need. Ensure all necessary APIs are
available and open to use. On the different end,
the platform must feature straightforward
interfaces to push collected data to enterprise
back-end systems and data processing solutions.
Even better if the platform additionally features
in-built analytics and visualization applications,
which can be quickly utilized for your use case.
6 performance compliance
Depending on your business environment,
comprehensive security and consistent
performance may be two major prerequisites for
successful IoT implementation. If your company is a
subject to strict compliance obligations, you need
to verify that the selected IoT technology provides
modern encryption protection for your data end to
end and delivers consistent level of performance
through high availability, elastic scalability, and
support of edge deployments.

7 Consider private vs public IoT cloud

The IoT technology can be accessed on some vendors public cloud or be deployed at the companys
controlled infrastructure as a private cloud. Both of them have their strong points. However, similarly to IoT
technology ownership, if the IoT is a strategic asset for your enterprise, benefits of the private IoT deployment
will tip the scales to its side, as we describe in our webinar on an IoT private cloud. Many companies also use
hybrid and multi-cloud approaches to have the best of both types of deployment. The bottom line is that an
advanced IoT platform should support deployment flexibility and let you be in control of this process.

2017 KaaIoT Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

6
IoT implementation checklist for enterprise

8 Test on pilot projects, take heed of DevOps

Test your IoT technology on small pilot projects, at this point also consider cluster setup, provisioning of new
solutions, user management, etc. Straightforward DevOps operations could speed up upgrade and
enhancement of your IoT solutions by many times, so this should be verified during test runs.

Ensure business
9 model continuity
The IoT technology is here to stay and it
increasingly permeates companies operations,
products and services in every industry. To ensure
your enterprise IoT implementation improves at
the same steady fashion and brings its entire value
to your business, your long-term IoT strategy
should be frequently revisited. As to the IoT
technology, some types of architectures are just
better expandable and customizable than the
others. Continuous shift to containers and
microservice architecture is a perfect illustration of
how the industry prepares to deal with multitudes
of connected devices, systems, and applications.
10 Outline potential
partnerships
As the final success factor for IoT implementation,
partnerships can speed up your IoT initiatives and
multiply their business value. For one thing,
partnering with IoT tech companies will allow you
to eliminate any gaps in your technology stack. As
another advantage, business partnerships will
enhance your companys presence on collateral
markets.

About KaaIoT
KaaIoT is the company steering the evolution of the open-source Kaa IoT Platform and
delivering Kaa-powered IoT solutions for the enterprise. As well as addressing common
IoT implementation challenges with our ready-to-go products and service packages, we
enable companies to set up their private IoT cloud
and run it on their own terms.

Looking for an advanced, open and flexible

IoT technology for your business?

DISCOVER KAA IOT PLATFORM

2017 KaaIoT Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.