Beating drum for IoT

The term IoT is everywhere in the mainstream media these days. Companies are looking for, and also being asked to implement IoT solutions. Furthermore, the Japanese government introduced so-called "IoT tax exemption" from June 2018 to 2021 fiscal year, in order to promote IoT solution to companies, expecting to promote efficiency to industries to prepare for upcoming population decline. ¹ No matter what is the motivations, the driving force to introduce IoT solutions to the existing workflow is growing day by day for every industry. However, Implementing a whole IoT solution requires a wide knowledge of infrastructure, from the physical layer to the application layer. AWS surely offers AWS IoT Core and Greengrass service to simplify implementation which would take responsibility of message broker part; getting traffic to cloud then analyze the data from connected devices. On the other hand, the task left for AWS users side is to collect information. AWS IoT users need to implement a network from on-premise to AWS, shown in the right in the diagram below. Connectivity is the first challenge for systems newly introducing IoT.

Challenge of a network for IoT Devices

Wireless network interface and routers are easily used by IoT devices to connect to the network to cloud in the initial mock-up. The existence of a router adds one more device to hop and additional battery power. This potentially adds a point of network failure. Usage of one more device could be a problem if the information needed to collect resides outside of the building, such as agricultural fields.

What SORACOM did

SORACOM alleviated these challenges for users implementing IoT using cloud solutions in the back end. In 2015, SORACOM introduced SORACOM Air service offering 3G network to sensor devices that typically require a wireless connection. The service is in the form of a SIM card that is ready to connect to sensor devices to 3G network. Furthermore, since SORACOM service heavily uses AWS service in the back end², their management console is similar to AWS management console, thus preexisting AWS customers would feel familiar with their online management tools and reporting capability. SORACOM Air asks only 5 to 10 yen (several cents) for the initial fee, and there is no mandatory period of the contract. The cost of the SORACOM Air SIM card is as minimum as a couple of yen per a day, depending on the speed class of the network, which users can configure anytime via their management console.

If the device finished testing for the day, for example, users can set the SIM state inactive to save the cost. This flexibility of cost per SIM card would provide cost efficiency for any companies which has to execute proof of concept before stepping into the production of IoT devices. The SIM itself is sold 1,240 yen (approx. 10 USD).

What is under their hood of SORACOM Air

Soracom Air is basically a MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) service. What separates SORACOM from the other MVNO vendor is they provide the service without owning actual hardware in the data center. SORACOM utilize Layer 2 connection to telecom vendor, such as NTT Docomo and KDDI etc. However, most of their administrative tasks, such as packet exchange and bandwidth administration are accomplished in their own application developed in house. These applications are running in AWS. Therefore their architecture is quite scalable. This initial cost strategy saved initial cost for the service start-up, and ultimately the cost for their users. Users can now enjoy as low as 300 yen (a couple of USD) per a month for one SORACOM Air SIM, without costing initial commitment on their budget.³

The latest involvement of SORACOM into AWS IoT service.

After launching SORACOM Air in 2015, they expanded their service line-ups which serve for connecting the on-premise system to the cloud, such as SORACOM Canal⁴ connect to AWS VPC. SORACOM also participated on the Secure element vendors of AWS IoT Greengrass⁵, and SORACOM Funnel directly connect to various cloud services including AWS IoT and Kinesis families. The latest release of their product, SORACOM LTE-M Button powered by AWS, directly connect to AWS IoT 1-Click service. Surprisingly, batteries of this button can be exchanged and the button could be re-usable after battery power is exhausted. This feature of the exchangeable battery was lacking in the previously existing AWS IoT button sold by Amazon. One could expect SORACOM to keep providing pleasant surprise to AWS users, expanding network service for connectivity to AWS and keep providing benefit for all AWS customers.

Incentives based on the Act on Special Measures for Productivity Improvement](https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/invest/incentive_programs/) ↩
SORACOM, INC (2019), 公式ガイドブック SORACOMプラットフォーム日経BPブックナビ. Page. 26 ↩
Pricing ↩
SORACOM Canal ↩
AWS IoT Greengrass now enables simplified deployments, enhanced security, and greater flexibility ↩