The World of an IoT CTO

Being CTO in an IoT environment is not as glamorous as it sounds. Yes, it involves setting technology direction and making implementation decisions, but it also means overseeing the day-to-day creation and evolution of functioning and successful IoT based products and solutions. In many cases a new CTO is faced with existing implementations that may be old and to use a descriptive word, cumbersome, to work with. Modernizing existing IoT solutions pose particular challenges for a CTO that will be discussed in a follow up blog. Green Field IoT solutions may seem easier but are often as difficult as migrations. In migrations you after all an already working solution while with new ones you have to create one that works. That is often easier said than done.

The main challenge is all the moving parts which in IoT can span from embedded programming of microcontrollers all the way to advance statistical methods used in deriving meaningful information from collected data. Add to that the need to address how users interact with IoT devices for operations, control and updates and you have a level of complexity and knowledge that goes beyond the typical CTO focused on simpler products, applications, and solutions. Some examples of decisions and day-to-day activities will demonstrate why:

·         - Working with hardware developers or suppliers of IoT ‘Thing’ on component selection and implementation understanding IoT System on a Chip offerings, capabilities and limitation.

·         - Together with marketing assessing and defining current and future market needs, lead development of Data Model focused on the needs of initial and planned IoT applications. This incorporates an understanding of available data and transforming it into meaningful information as well optimizing data transfer needs in order to meet application requirements as well as data transfer limitations from for example low cost cellular connectivities.

·         - Select and implement the best IoT connectivity technologies and understand technical, business, security, and operational limitations.

·         - Select IoT data handling platform choosing premise or cloud based on current and future business needs. Decide on developing your own around current platform offerings or selecting a customizable solution. This involves direct costs in the form of engineering staffing and support. Of particular importance are overall life cycle costs and longevity of product – Google just exited the IoT platform business, so vendor selection is key.

·         - Drive data processing and handling implementation assessing storage requirements and short term/long term data storage needs. Real time versus long term needs, times series versus SQL – the decisions are many.

·         - Select how IoT applications (web, mobile, other) should be implemented. While these should be driven by marketing the technical implementation will often decide what is and is not possible. While web implementations are pretty standard mobile applications require technical knowledge about the different mobile platforms. Other is the trickiest ones as they require integration and communication with controllers, actuators and not to forget, other systems and applications.

·         - In deriving meaningful information from IoT data it helps to have someone steeped in statistics, probability, and mathematical methods. The belief that collecting as much data as possible and then hand it to a data scientist still prevails although it is more and more difficult to defend. The best results come from a thorough understanding of the IoT systems, knowing what type of information will be of interesting and implementing the data collection up front with the analytics at the end as the solution is designed rather than hope for the best.

Apart from providing knowledge and expertise in these areas the CTO should be responsible for the timely development and successful implementation of the IoT solution so that it meets business and market needs and result in business success. Having experience in product management, marketing and/or sales helps. A CTO striving for excellence should not be afraid of meeting customers and users. In fact, playing the role of a simple customer or dumb user can provide a useful additional role to the technical part of being a CTO. 

Being able to direct the technical development of complete IoT solutions therefore demands an unusual breath of knowledge. The world of the CTO is both demanding and complex.