Industrial Internet Consortium Reference Architecture Reinforces IT/OT Convergence

As the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) concept continues to evolve, several manufacturing industry groups have, or plan to, issue reference architectures for use in establishing an IIoT ecosystem. These framework documents focus on system requirements and the "what," and sometimes the "who," behind implementation planning, while typically leaving the "how" up to other efforts or the implementer.

The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), an industry group founded in 2014 by AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM, and Intel, issued its own Industrial Internet Reference Architecture (IIRA) in June 2015. This group, which currently has over 200 member companies, is focused on accelerating growth in the Industrial Internet by promoting best practices.

The IIC's reference architecture document covers a broad range of topics related to Industrial Internet implementation. It highlights areas in which existing technologies and standards apply and where gaps exist. In doing so, it references numerous potentially applicable existing standards activities and technologies, such as ISO/IEC/IEEE, OASIS, OMG (the IIC's parent organization), and the Semantic Web. It strongly reflects the industry trend toward information technology/operational technology (IT/OT) convergence in areas such as the need to rely on IT rather than OT for storing, distributing, and analyzing data generated by the IIoT. It also reinforces the contention that both Analytics and Big Data are important for achieving the IIoT's potential.

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Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Connected Devices, Reference Architecture, Architecture Framework, ARC Advisory Group.