Internet of Things – Architecture © - 75 -
The IoT Functional Model contains seven longitudinal Functionality Groups
(light blue) complemented by two transversal Functionality Groups
(Management and Security, dark blue). These transversal groups provide
functionalities that are required by each of the longitudinal groups. The policies
governing the transversal groups will not only be applied to the groups
themselves, but do also pertain to the longitudinal groups.
As an example: for a security policy to be effective, it must ensure that there is
no functionality provided by a component that would circumvent the policy and
provide unauthorised access.
Next, the interactions between the FGs are shown. As can be seen from Figure
14 , the Functional Model is a hierarchical model and the main interactions
between the FG‘s are depicted with orange arrows. Since the transversal FGs
(Management and Security) interface with most of the other FGs, their
interactions with the other FG‘s are not explicitly depicted.
In the remainder of this section, each of the FGs will be described in more detail
(with exception of the Application and Device FGs, since trying to capture their
properties would be so generic that they do not add any value).
3.5.2.1 IoT Process Management
The IoT Process Management FG relates to the conceptual integration of
(business) process management systems with the IoT ARM. The overall aim of
this FG is to provide the functional concepts necessary to conceptually integrate
the idiosyncrasies of the IoT world into traditional (business) processes. By so
doing, enterprises can effectively utilise IoT sub-systems adhering to common
standards and best practices, thus avoiding the overhead and costs of isolated
and proprietary ―Intranet-of-Things‖ island solutions.
In the IoT-A project, the IoT Process Management FG is addressed by WP2.
The IoT Process Management FG provides additions and extensions to industry
standards, for instance BPMN 2.0. The additions feature IoT-specific aspects of
(business) processes, such as the reliability or accountability of sensor data
providing information about Virtual Entities or the required processing
capabilities of Devices hosting certain Resources relevant for the real world.
Applications that interact with the IoT Process Management FG via IoT-
augmented process models can effectively be shielded from IoT-specific details
of lower layers of the functional model, which greatly reduces integration costs
and thus contributes to an increased adoption of IoT-A based IoT systems
[Meyer 2011].
One important aspect of IoT Process Management is its inherent closeness to
enterprise systems. As it was already introduced in the Domain Model (Section
3.3), the IoT Process Management FG is where the business objects and