Traditional to Big Data to IoT: Transaction Processing Performance Council Establishes Internet of Things Working Group (TPC-IoT)

Over the past quarter century, the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) has developed several industry standard benchmarks for database performance, pretty much in line with major technology trends. The two most influential benchmark standards have been TPC-C (standard for benchmarking transaction processing systems) introduced in 1991,andTPC-D and its successor TPC-H (standards for benchmarking decision support systems) introduced in 1994. These standards have been significant driving force behind the development and advancement of several database, server and storage related technologies. In addition, the TPC laid a solid foundation for complete system-level performance, and methodology for calculating total-system-price and price-performance, that have been widely adapted in the industry.

There is no doubt that industry and technology landscapes have changed and are still continue to change at a fast pace. Two of the technologies that will change the world in next 10 years areBig Data and Internet of things (IoT).

Big Data: Big Data is a popular term now that describes the exponential growth of data, often defined by the 5Vs, and the associated technologies to storage and process effectively and drive business values. The Big Data technology and services market represents one of the fast-growing, multi-billion dollar, worldwide market that is expected to grow to a$60 billion market driving$300 billion worldwide IT spending directly or indirectly by 2020.

Foreseeing the importance, in 2014  the TPC has developed TPC Express Benchmark HS (TPCx-HS)  to provide the industry with verifiable performance, price-performance, and availability metrics of hardware and software systems dealing with Big Data. This standard can be used to assess a broad range of system topologies and implementation of Hadoop systems in a technically rigorous and directly comparable, and vendor-neutral manner. This is the first major step while the TPC continues to enhance and develop new standards in this area such as TPC-DS with support for Hadoop and TPC-Big Bench.

Internet of Things (IoT): IoT  has emerged in the last few  of years, poised to transform virtually every major market segments, which contains a complex mix of technologies and products, from data collection and data curation to complex analytics exploiting the data generated by exploding number of connected devices. According to IDC the global IoT market will grow from$665 billion in 2014 to$1.7 trillion in 2020. To put that in perspective, it's an absolutely enormous figure; only 16 economies in the world had gross domestic products exceeding$1 trillion in 2014.

As the IoT ecosystem evolves in the enterprises, it is eminent to have a set of standards that enable effective comparison of hardware and software systems and topologies in a technology and vendor-neutral manner. Continuing its commitment to bring relevant standards to the industry, today the TPC announced the formation TPC-IoT benchmark committee tasked with developing industry standard benchmarks for benchmarking hardware and software platforms associated with IoT.

We'd like to connect with companies, research and government institutions, to ensure holistic perspective during the benchmark development process. Anyone interested in our efforts can visit our membership page.

Thank You
Raghu Nambiar
(Chairman, TPC-IoT)