Welcome to the world of the IoT. As an architect in this new field, we have to understand what the customer is building, and what the use cases require. IoT systems are not a fire-and-forget type of design. A customer expects several things from jumping on the IoT train.
First, there must be a positive reward. That is dependent on your business, and your customer's intent. From my experience, a 5x gain is the target and has worked well for the introduction of new technologies to pre-existing industries. Second, IoT design is, by nature, a plurality of devices. The value of IoT is not a single device or a single location broadcasting data to a server. It's a set of things broadcasting information and understanding the value the information in aggregate is trying to tell you. Whatever is designed must scale or will scale, therefore that needs attention in upfront design.
We now start exploring the topology of an IoT system as a whole then break down individual components throughout the rest of the book.
Remember, data is the new oil.