On-The-Fly Computing Meets IoT Markets - Towards a Reference Architecture

The Internet of Things (IoT) connects the things of our everyday life and supports us in our common activities. Several markets for IoT services have been created. These markets enable IoT users to search and compose services in order to support an IoT activity. However, existing IoT markets like IFTTT (If This Then That) are not convenient for users with respect to service discovery and composition. The objective of On-the-fly (OTF) computing is to configure and provide software markets that fulfill individual users' wishes by the automatic on-the-fly composition of single services. The architecture framework of On-the-fly computing markets helps architects to systematically develop these systems in different domains. In this paper, we use our OTF architectural framework to examine the requirements of a reference architecture for IoT markets. Furthermore, we perform a comparison between the architecture of IFTTT as an existing IoT market with this reference architecture. The results show how existing IoT markets can be improved. In return, the practical knowledge of IFTTT is taken to the reference architecture. This knowledge helps to overcome the limitations of today's IoT markets or creating new markets in the future.