A Case for Ending Monolithic Apps for Connected Devices

Connected sensing devices, such as cameras, thermostats, in-home motion, door-window, energy, water sensors [1], collectively dubbed as the Internet of Things (IoT), are rapidly permeating our living environments [2], with an estimated 50 billion such devices in use by 2020 [8]. They enable a wide variety of applications spanning security, efficiency, healthcare, and others. Typically, these applications collect data using sensing devices to draw inferences about the environment or the user, and use the inferences to perform certain actions. For example, Nest [10] uses motion sensor data to infer home occupancy and adjusts the thermostat.