IoT is often referred to as an ecosystem because its concept is to simplify the lives of common people. In order to achieve this, many components are proposed as to be parts of this ecosystem. Following are the major ones:
Sensing, Embedded systems and Connectivity: These are the components that relate straight to the devices, appliances and machines. Sensors are semiconductor components that sense real world happenings. Embedded system is a technology that enables us to induce a miniaturized circuit inside of another circuit. Connectivity is required for all these fundamental components to communicate.
Smart devices and environment, Cloud computing and Big data: Smart devices are those that are equipped with sensors, embedded systems and connectivity. In an IoT ecosystem, cloud computing plays a vital role since all the tasks related to data like storage, analysis and reporting happen on the servers. Big data is a very recent technology that is used to store and analyze data on a large scale.
Technology, Software and Application: Technology is everywhere in an IoT ecosystem. Its not only in the hardware part but in software part also. There can be an Android application or an iOS application to control the smart devices. There can also be a website to get detailed reports about the device operations and notifications.
User or Groups of community: Users are the most integral part of the IoT ecosystem. Using Android applications or iOS applications, a user can not only get notifications about the happenings but can also control the happenings.
Interconnectivity: There must be interconnectivity enablers in every IoT devices. All the sensors, actuators, network devices must have 24*7 connectivity so that not even a single data can go missed.
Heterogeneity: Since sensors are built up for sensing different types of data and from different types of sources, heterogeneity is the most fundamental characteristic of an IoT ecosystem.
Dynamic changes: An IoT ecosystem is not only to notify people about what’s happening but also to let people control those happenings. If a user controls an IoT enabled device, he’s making dynamic changes to the state of the device.
Enormous scale: Scalability is the biggest characteristic of an IoT ecosystem. Since people become able to control things right from the place they are, the entire ecosystem becomes enormous.
Security: Security is another very important concern about IoT. Since the idea of IoT is to connect day-to-day thing with the Internet, many personal data is exposed to the potential threats. For this to avoid, cryptography has to play a vital role in this ecosystem.