Presentation on IoT platform federations during the GIoTS 2018 conference, collocated with IoT Week 2018, 4-7 June 2018, Bilbao

1. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium
Collaboration Mechanisms for IoT Platform
Federations Fostering Organizational Interoperability
symbIoTe
Ivana Podnar Žarko, Joaquin Iranzo Yuste, Christoph Ruggenthaler,
João Garcia, Pavle Skočir, Sergios Soursos
Global IoT Summit 2018, Bilbao, June 5, 2018
Grant Agreement No 688156

2. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium2
IoT - today
… with ~400
platforms on the
market
Variety is the
spice of IoT!

3. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium3
• Absence of cross-platform and cross-
domain apps
• Will a single standard/technology/protocol
prevail?
• With more than 400 platforms on the
market, will only a handful of them
survive?*
• Interoperability at the data level (semantic
interoperability)
• Decentralized interoperability solutions for
collaborative stakeholders (organizational
interoperability)
The Interoperability Challenge
Gartner predicts that “Through 2018,
half the cost of implementing IoT
solutions will be spent integrating
various IoT components with each
other and back-end systems.”
* Akash Bhatia, Zia Yusuf, David Ritter, and Nicolas Hunke. Who Will Win the IoT Platform Wars? BCG Blogpost,
29.10.2017

4. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium4
• The lack of interoperability and collaboration
between platforms will negatively influence
future business cases targeting large-scale and
cross-domain IoT deployments
• Organizational interoperability enabling direct
and business-driven interactions between IoT
platform owners has so far not been adequately
addressed
We argue that…

5. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium5
• ETSI Whitepaper 2008: “the ability of
organizations to effectively communicate
and transfer (meaningful) data
(information) even though they may be
using a variety of different information
systems over widely different infrastructures.”
• IoT platform federations: associations between two or more
platforms which are willing to share access to their IoT resources
• Benefit for IoT applications: an increased set of resources is available
in platform federations
Organizational Interoperability

6. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium6
• A platform is a prosumer of IoT
resources with a goal to extend
resource offerings to its applications:
collaborative platforms complement
each other’s infrastructure
– similar IoT platforms operating in
different locations increase their
reachability
– collocated platforms can offer cross-
domain solutions
Emerging New Partnerships
Example: Samsung Health

7. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium7
symbIoTe in a Nutshell
Open Source IoT
interoperability
middleware
and not “yet
another IoT
platform”

8. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium8
Platform Federations
CoreServices
Platform A Platform B
QoS
Constraints
Membership
information
Platform C
Interworking
Interface
Interworking
Interface
Interworking
Interface
Federation 1
Federation 2
Application
Application • Support closer
collaboration between
federated platforms
• Decentralized metadata
management (info on
shared resources
remains within a
federation)
• Mechanisms for
monitoring, SLA and
trust management
metadata metadata
resource
accessresource
access

9. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium9
Example metadata
https://symbiote-open.man.poznan.pl/symbioteSearch/

10. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium10
Example data provided by a resource

11. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium11
Components for platform federations
Core
Services
PlatformCloud
Resource
Access
Proxy
AAM
Monitoring
Interworking Interface
Administration Registry
Core
Bartering and
Trading
Core Anomaly
Detection
Cloud-Core Interface
Federation
Manager
Bartering
Manager
(BM)
Platform
Registry
Subscription
Manager
Trust and
Reputation
SLA
Manager
Microservices
deployed and operated
within an IoT
platform’s space
Microervices running
at https://symbiote-
open.man.poznan.pl/
symbIoTe software is published as open source: https://github.com/symbiote-h2020
MyPlatform
RAP
Plugin

12. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium12
Security Aspects
Federated Platforms
register
federation
3. access resource
in P2 using
FOREIGN token
1. register to P1 and get
HOME token
P1 P2
Core Services
2. get FOREIGN token
using P1 HOME token
Decoupled Authentication and Authorization
• PKI certificates trust chaining architecture
• Actor’s attributes are distributed in standardized
trusted data structures: JSON Web Tokens (JWT)
Resources protected using the Attribute-Based
Access Control (ABAC) paradigm
• Access Policy assigned to each resource
• Management of local certificates
• Management of local actor attributes and
attribute mapping functions
• Administration of platforms
• Platform and user authentication
• Management of symbIoTe components and
platforms’ CA X.509 certificates
• Management of local actor attributes and
attribute mapping functions
CoreServicesPlatformCloud
Application

13. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium13
SLA Management
• When a platform joins a
federation, an SLA is signed
based on QoS parameters and
their constraints.
• Our assumption: platforms
agree to use a common
information model.
• Federated resources must
comply with a series of QoS
parameters, (e.g. availability,
load) to guarantee a
predefined quality level to
applications using them.

14. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium14
Bartering
Platform A
Federated
Resources
Platform B
Federated
Resources
Core Services
1. get_data
2. request_coupon_A3. generate_coupon_A
5. return_coupon_A
7. return_data
Application

15. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium15
Trust Calculation
Resource Trust
Calculated for offered resources
Adaptive Resource Trust
Calculated for needed resources
Platform Reputation
Calculated for federated platforms
Federated Trust &
Reputation
Management
Use Resource metrics
+ Dependability
+ Access statistics
Use Platform metrics
+ Federation history
+ Bartering behaviour
+ Anomaly Detection
Use Adaptive metrics
+ Platform reputation
+ Resource trust
+ Monitoring Stats
Share
resource trust values
within a federation Resource Trust
Calculated for offered resources
Adaptive Resource Trust
Calculated for needed resources
Platform Reputation
Calculated for federated platforms
Federated Trust &
Reputation
Management

16. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium16
Growing Ecosystem

17. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium17
• Novel concept of IoT platform federations with a
decentralized management solution
– Enables direct and secure collaboration between federated
platforms to increase offerings to their apps and users
• Novel collaboration mechanisms: SLA management,
bartering mechanism and trust calculation
• Growing demand for strategic partnerships to be
supported by interoperability solutions where data and
information is exchanged directly in a controlled,
meaningful and trustful manner
Conclusions

18. © 2018 – The symbIoTe Consortium
Thank you!
Questions?
www.symbiote-h2020.eu
info@symbiote-h2020.eu
@symbiote_h2020
H2020 symbIoTe
github.com/symbiote-h2020
Visit us in booth 32 for a live demo