IoT basics and Testing Focus - TheInternetofThings · WHITEPAPER SEPTEmbER 2015 IoT basics and Testing Focus AuthOr: Rajesh Shanmugasundaram Technical Architect – Mobile Development

WHITEPAPER SEPTEmbER 2015

www.hcltech.com

IoT basics and Testing Focus

AuthOr:

Rajesh ShanmugasundaramTechnical Architect – Mobile Development andTest Automation

Business Assurance and Testing Services (BATS)

businessassurance& testing

QEx Whitepaper

IOT BASICS AND TESTING FOCUS | SEpTEmBER 2015

© 2015, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIbITED. THIS DOCUmENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT bY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT .............................................................................................. 3

ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................... 3

WHAT IS INTERNET OF THINGS? ......................................................... 4

IoT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS .................................................................. 5

IoT RESEARCH REPORT ....................................................................... 8

IoT APPLICATION LANDSCAPE ............................................................ 9

IoT KEY COMPONENTS ....................................................................... 10

IoT PRODUCTS ..................................................................................... 11

IoT TESTING FOCUS AREA ................................................................. 12

IoT TESTING SCOPE ............................................................................ 13

IoT TESTING COVERAGE .................................................................... 14

AUTHOR DETAILS ................................................................................ 16

REFERENCES ....................................................................................... 16

ABOUT HCL .......................................................................................... 17

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ABSTRACTIn today’s world, across forums and articles related to the IT industry, we can find the mention of digital enablement of things, or IoT, expanded as Internet of Things. In other words, we can say that the world is leaping forward into an internet-enabled revolutionary computing technology which involves communication Over The Air (OTA) between Machine to Machine (M2M), machine to cloud, machine to objects, and much more. This enables them to share intelligent information with each other directly through embedded real world sensors and actuators connected to the internet.

This proliferation of IoT-based devices with embedded applications which cater to diversified user stories will continue to grow swiftly. Going forward, IoT-based devices are going to be a significant part of our life, irrespective of personal, business or enterprise level transactions. This unprecedented growth has prompted all major product companies to develop or spend huge investments on research in IoT which will simplify our life through various automated data measuring and tracking methodologies.

Internet, during its inception, was used to communicate with the world using basic computers connected to an enterprise server. But now, the rise in new generation of mobile communication technologies such as 2G, 3G, 4G, cut throat price wars, and availability across the consumer world has made internet available to everyone using any device such as Mobile phones, Tablets, Smart TVs or Setup boxes.

In IoT, everyday objects are connected to the internet using sensors or BLE technologies, thus sharing data with each other, enabling anytime anywhere decisions. This revolution will be the internet’s largest expansion ever and will have extensive usage across industries. Given these factors, IoT is playing a major role in our life.

This research whitepaper focuses on and provides a brief about IoT, trends by sharing key research report, business usages, and benefits. It also provides details about IoT testing areas and testing types to be involved and different test scenarios to be tested.

ABBREVIATIONSSl. No. Acronyms Full form

1 IoT Internet of Things2 OTA Over the Air3 M2M Machine to Machine

4 IP Internet Protocol

5 OS Operating Systems

6 YoY Year on Year

7 QoQ Quarter on Quarter

8 UI User Interface

9 App Application

10 iOS iPhone, iPad



The concept of IoT was introduced and documented in early 1999 by Kevin Asthon. IoT is the network of physical devices or things that are embedded with sensors, actuators, or programmed software, building connectivity for exchanging data with the manufacturer, operator and/or other connected devices. These IoT-enabled devices communicate to the internet in dual enabled mode (on and off) to transmit specific data to backend systems as and when required.

Gartner research forecasts that by 2020, there will be over 26Bn IoT-connected devices; other research (IDC, ABI and Cisco) predicts that the estimate may go over 100Bn. IoT is a giant network of connected ‘things’ (which also includes people). The relationship will be between human to human, human to objects, and objects to objects.

According Gartner research report, the economic value-add across different sectors is expected to grow in 2020 to be USD 1.9Tn (ref. below figure)

QUOTES y “Sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects are linked through wired and

wireless networks, often using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that connects the Internet.” – McKinsey

y “Things are active participants in business, information and social processes where they are enabled to interact and communicate among themselves and with the environment by exchanging data and information sensed about the environment, while reacting autonomously to the real/ physical world events and influencing it by running processes that trigger actions and create services with or without direct human intervention.” – European R&D Team

y “The Internet of Things represents an evolution in which objects are capable of interacting with other objects. Hospitals can monitor and regulate pacemakers long distance, factories can automatically address production line issues and hotels can adjust temperature and lighting according to a guest’s preferences, to name just a few examples.” - IBM

WHAT IS INTERNET OF THINGS?



Product companies across the world are focusing on manufacturing IoT-based devices and connections, buoyed by great emphasis and incentives from governments to expand the digital footprint in their countries. A recent report from GSMA and BI depicts that currently Asia has most number of IoT connections.

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

Asia Europe NorthAmerica

LatinAmerica

Africa Oceania

Percentage of Machine-to-Machine Connections

IoT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

y IDC estimates the IoT market to grow to USD 8.9Tn with over 212Bn connected things by 2020

y 50Bn devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020, predicts Cisco

y The utility smart grid transformation is expected to almost double the customer information system market, from USD 2.5Bn in 2013 to USD 5.5Bn in 2020, based on a study from Navigant Research

y The UK government recently approved GBP 45Mn (USD 76.26Mn) in research funding for Internet of Things technologies

y The number of developers involved in IoT activities will reach 1.7Mn globally by the end of 2014, according to ABI Research estimates.



0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Asia

Latin America

Norht America

Europe

Asia And Latin America Lead in Implementation

We already have an IoT Solution in Place In the Next 12 Months

In the Next 1-2 Years in the Next 2-5 years

No Data No Data2

16% 14% 26% 17% 12% 16%

12% 20% 25% 17% 11% 15%

12% 30% 30% 15% 5% 8%

21% 51% 18% 6% 3%

The number of connected devices has already surpassed the total world population in year 2005 and it is estimated that the number of devices will be around 50Bn which will be about 7 times of the world population at that time.

World Population

Connected Devices Person

More connected

devices than

people

2003

6.3 Billion

0.08

2010

6.8 Billion

1.84

2015

7.2 Billion

3.47

2020

7.6 Billion

Connected Devices 500 Million 12.5 Billion 25 Billion 50 Billion

6.58



Google trends also depict that from 2004 onwards most users started searching the term Internet of Things has grown enormously.

Technology analysts Gartner suggest that IoT is currently at the ‘peak of inflated expectations’. IoT has also been identified as one of the emerging technologies in IT as noted in Gartner’s IT Hype Cycle (RHS Figure). A Hype Cycle is a way to represent the emergence, adoption, maturity, and impact on applications of specific technologies. It has been forecasted that IoT will take 5–10 years for market adoption.



IoT RESEARCH REPORTThe research report below shows different industry projection for Global Economic Value of IoT:

Industry projections for Economic Value of the Internet of Things in 2020 ($ trillions)25

14.4 1.9

CiscoIDC

MachinaGartner

7.1 4.5 1.9

The figure below depicts the number of vehicle registered with IoT-enabled application, based on the recent ABI Research 2014:

2014 2018 2022 2026 20300

100

200

300

400

Registered Vehicles with Internet of Things applications

North America

Europe

Asia-Pacific

Rest of the World



This figure shows the forecasted connected devices by 2020.

0

20

40

60

80

100

IHs

Mac

hina

/GSM

A

ITU

Gar

tner

ABI

Cis

co

Eric

sson

Mor

gan

Stan

ley

Del

l

Ham

mer

smith

Gro

up

Industry estimates for Connected deices (billions)

IoT APPLICATION LANDSCAPEThere are many verticals which will be impacted by the emerging IoT. These domains can be classified based on the type of network availability, coverage, scale, heterogeneity, repeatability, user involvement, and impact.

The figure below depicts different categorization of the domains:

`IoT

Applications

ConsumerSmart

Home & Cities

Automobile

Security

Healthcare

Energy & Utilities

Agriculture

Infra



In each of the above verticals, there is a huge opportunity in IoT application development and data transfer that can introduce convenience for enterprises as well as the end users. For instance, the ‘Consumer and Smart Home IoT’ produces electricity usage data in the house and makes it available to the electricity (utility) company which can in turn optimize the supply and demand in the ‘Utility IoT’. The internet enables data sharing between different service providers in a seamless manner creating multiple business opportunities.

IoT KEY COMPONENTSIoT building blocks consist of three major components:

Things

Embedded object connected with products and other Things combine processors, sensors and software with connectivity

Network Communication

Communication networks like 4G/3G,LTE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC, Zig Bee connect Things to the internet in bidirectional

Computing Infrastructure

Upload or download data, perform analysis from data analytics tools create new software application to display different forms of value and new business

THINGS

Embedded objects residing within products, which collect data from Sensors and Actuators and send them to the backend systems.

NETWORK COMMUNICATIONS

Communication components form the bridge between things and backend analytic systems. Internet enabled things communicate using different types of network protocol (4G/3G, LTE, Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth) through wired or wireless medium.



COMPUTING INFRASTRUCTURE

This component receives data from different things and applications and provides different business views of KPIs and performance parameters with the help of analytical tools, thus helping the consumer/ enterprise to take business-critical decisions.

IoT PRODUCTSThere are already IoT-enabled devices available in the market.

Product Name VeNdor Name Product Features

Smart Thermostats

y Monitors your schedule and program itself to maximize both comfort and energy efficiency

y Auto enables room temperature up or down, based on the weather conditions and user presence in a room

Connected Cars

y Tracks parking, billing. and insurance automatically

Activity Tracker y Helps to monitor heart rate

patterns continuously, activity levels, calorie expenditure, and also skin temperature on your wrist 24/7

Smart Outlet y Remotely switches any device or

appliance on or off

y Tracks device energy usage

y Provides notifications

Parking Sensor y Identifies real-time availability of

parking spaces on the phone

y Uses Embedded Street Sensor on the parking place



IoT TESTING FOCUS AREADue to the recent focus and rising expectations for IoT-enabled devices, household goods manufactures, healthcare vendors, utilities vendors, car manufactures, and other vendors are planning to release proprietary IoT products on YoY and QoQ basis. Moreover, the enterprise world is also rapidly migrating or developing and rolling out their IoT-enabled apps into the mobile app market.

Every quarter, the expected number of IoT devices to be released is growing enormously and the consumer expectations in terms of technology UI and product quality is also rising fast. So delivering a non-intrusive, high quality product is very important and thorough end-to-end functional, non-functional, and security testing becomes critical. IoT-enabled devices have their own set of usability issues and challenges. For example the mobile application not able to communicate to particular IoT device, sensor not sending data, application not getting installed on a device, app regularly crashing, and others.

`IoT Testing

Area

Sensors

NetworkCommunicationApplication

Cloud/other Network

Majority of these problems arise due to a) quick roll-out into the market without proper testing, b) compromising testing platforms, and c) lack of usability behavior. Thus the IoT-enabled devices are unlikely to work as expect. To ensure that these devices work as expected, the IoT development organization has to follow end-to-end quality testing.



Any IoT Testing has to consider diverse scenarios that need to be tested, the interoperability of devices, and the fact that most of the IoT devices are mission-critical in nature requiring high code coverage. The process of automating testing is imperative to its success and with simulators, once can easily mimic the network of nodes, inherent to IoT which cuts down the hardware costs.

Overall, the testing challenges is wide area to look starting from devices, sensors with backend data analytics, and also validation of various real-time IoT environments that meet application intricacy and performance..

IoT TESTING SCOPEThere are four key IoT testing scopes which the team has to look into for testing any IoT-enabled product. The following diagram illustrates the same:

Components Validation Device Hardwar Embedded Software Application Cloud infrastructure Network Connectivity Third party software

Function Validation Interaction between device Basic device Testing (Start/Stop/Restart/Interrupt) Error Handling Valid Calculation

Performance Validation Data transmit Frequency Multiple request handing Synchronization Interrupt testing Device performance Consistency validation

Security and Data Validation Validate data packets Verify data loses or corrupt Data encryption/decryption Data values Users Roles and Responsibility & its Usage Pattern

IoT

Test

ing

Scop

e



IoT TESTING COVERAGEEach IoT scope comes with a list of challenges that the testers have to deal with while testing. These issues have their own levels of severity, based on which the testers generally prioritize the test cases.

The testing team has to focus on core components of the IoT system to treat functional and connectivity testing as important elements of overall IoT product testing. This testing also has to be prioritized based on the nature of the IoT product and the dependency. The following type of testing is usually performed across the IoT products before their release to market.

Security Testing

Performance Testing

Compatibility Testing

Usability Testing

Functional Testing

Network Testing

Services Testing

Operational Testing

Functional Testing: To check the way the consumer wants the output, based on specific inputs given to the IoT app

Compatibility Testing: Categories verify and validate the possible combination of device versions, communication protocol versions, mobile devices, resolutions, and mobile OS version

Usability Testing: Verify user experience of IoT app, with respect to its usage, visibility of text, appeal, and usefulness of the content to the end user

Network Testing: Verify the IoT app with different network connections and ensure app to sync with all different backend combination protocol

Security Testing: Validate privacy of data, reliability of IoT app, verification, availability, and authorization are the factors that need to be considered. Also verifies if the IoT app uses any weak password or missing data encryption. Verify apps followed network security standards and authentication mechanism to authenticate of the required app.

Performance Testing: To check the overall performance of the IoT app and validate the response time based on different user loads, optimize the code to improve the performance, verify with different scenarios like low battery, less memory, switch between different networks.



Services Testing: Check the IoT app enabled with different service requests with backend system with online and offline mode. Also verifies request and response of system.

Operational Testing: To verify behavior of IoT app when battery fully discharged when updated version app get installed or for any interruption of message or call received

The table below gives you the detail testing type matrix that an IoT end-to-end system should cover:

IoT Elements

Testing TypesSensor Application Network

Backend

(Data Center)

Functional Testing

Usability Testing

Security Testing

Performance Testing

Compatibility Testing

Services Testing

Operational Testing



AUTHOR DETAILS

REFERENCES y http://www.gartner.com/

y http://www.forbes.com/

y http://www.infoq.com/

y http://www.techwell.com/

y http://www.qatest.org/

y http://www.cio.com/

y TechTargets.com

y Slideshare.net

y www.bosch-si.com/

y Cisco.com

y www.cio.com/

y www.millennialmedia.com

y ABI Research

y IDC Research

y Fierce Mobile Content

RAJESH SHANMUGASUNDARAM

http://www.infoq.com/

http://www.techwell.com/

http://www.qatest.org/

http://www.cio.com/

http://www.bosch-si.com/

http://www.millennialmedia.com

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ABOUT HCL

About HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company working with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since its emergence on the global landscape, and after its IPO in 1999, HCL has focused on ‘transformational outsourcing’, underlined by innovation and value creation, offering an integrated portfolio of services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and business services. HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network of offices in 31 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Consumer Services, Public Services and Healthcare & Life sciences. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of ‘Employees First, Customers Second’ which empowers its 106,107 transformers to create real value for customers. HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated revenues of US$ 6 billion, for the Financial Year ended as on 30th June 2015 (on LTM basis). For more information, please visit www.hcltech.com

About HCL Enterprise

HCL is a $6.9 billion leading global technology and IT enterprise comprising two companies listed in India – HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems. Founded in 1976, HCL is one of India’s original IT garage start-ups. A pioneer of modern computing, HCL is a global transformational enterprise today. Its range of offerings includes product engineering, custom & package applications, BPO, IT infrastructure services, IT hardware, systems integration, and distribution of information and communications technology (ICT) products across a wide range of focused industry verticals. The HCL team consists of over 110,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate from 31 countries including over 505 points of presence in India. HCL has partnerships with several leading global 1000 firms, including leading IT and technology firms. For more information, please visit www.hcl.com

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IoT basics and Testing Focus - TheInternetofThings · WHITEPAPER SEPTEmbER 2015 IoT basics and Testing Focus AuthOr: Rajesh Shanmugasundaram Technical Architect – Mobile Development