For the past decade, we all have been witnessing the evolution of organizations and the way we do business. The traditional definition of a workplace which consisted of cubicles, meeting & conference rooms is rapidly diminishing, and with it, also the idea of a defined workplace. Remote access and BYOD could be deemed as the stepping stones of digitization of businesses, and have resulted in the expansion of organizational periphery.

But, how do you accomplish the overwhelming task of creating an integrated ecosystem comprising of diverse applications, across platforms, over a widespread network of IoT devices. That’s where you need a robust and efficient middleware infrastructure. And, in order to achieve it, every advanced organization needs to ensure the following aspects with utmost importance:

• Interconnectivity

The primary function of a middleware – seamlessly connecting devices, networks, and applications, from across the organizations. Thus, creating an interlink of organizational applications that function together to deliver a collaborated result to achieve combined success. It also pertains to the format and encoding of the data exchanged. Multiple APIs are employeed to carry out these tasks of integration.

• Device Management

It needs to be ensured that all the devices in the organization are integrated, and visible to the neighboring devices in the system. You also need to ensure that all these devices are secured, risk free and compatible with the organization’s overall IT standards.

• Scalability

This is one critical aspect that you cannot fail to account for. With an aggressive growth approach and businesses going global, your middleware solution needs to be scalable to accommodate the rapidly growing needs of your organization. Failing to do so, will not only turn out to be a tedious task, but also incur an added cost.

• Security & Privacy

With the member devices being widespread and critical business data being accessible even from networks outside the organizational  periphery, it is of immense importance to ensure the security of the network and data, and also to authenticate all member devices. The privacy and security of a middleware solution are even more vital in industries such as healthcare, finance, and banking. It should be realized that security is a critical part of any middleware architecture.

• Data Management

With the growing digital trend and organizational expansion, the number of devices and data sources in the network will keep rising exponentially. Managing, exchanging and processing humungous volumes of data is a challenge for current enterprise middleware. Hence, organizations need to find innovate solutions to source, process and transfer data volumes efficiently. It is this growing need that has encouraged numerous projects to develop device level middleware – UBIWARE, SIRENA, Linksmart, ASPIRE, and many more.

The number of organizations adapting the ‘new age workplace’ model is increasing by the day, and technology advancements have been responsible for this transforamation. Today, the only necessities for a functional workplace are web access and IoT devices. Cloud services are a major contributor as well, addressing all the infrastructure and application needs – Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Database as a Service (DbaaS). Middleware facilitates seamless integration of an organization’s on-Cloud applications with its on-premise applications, thus reducing Capex and increasing profitability. And with IoT and technology heralding a business revolution wagon, an efficient and robust Middleware would serve as the fuel that gives it a much needed impetus.