IoT systems rarely fail because of hardware constraints. They fail because we continue to design them as collections of isolated devices rather than as distributed systems. As edge infrastructure, cloud platforms, and AI workloads become integral to modern deployments, device-centric approaches to IoT architecture at scale begin to collapse under their own complexity. The real challenge is no longer connectivity, but how devices participate in systems that can evolve, integrate, and be managed over time.
That device-centric mindset breaks down quickly as deployments grow. As Anastasios Zafeiropoulos, Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Network Management and Optimal Design Laboratory (NETMODE) of the National Technical University of Athens, describes it: “If you do not virtualise devices, you don’t have a unified way to manage them.” Lifecycle management, software updates, and maintenance become increasingly brittle as device fleets expand and diversify, making IoT device management at scale difficult to sustain.
The issue is not purely operational. It is architectural.
Modern IoT systems operate across a computing continuum that spans devices, edge infrastructure, and cloud platforms. Treating IoT logic as something that lives exclusively on the device ignores how real systems are built today. “When we speak about applications and microservices-based applications, you develop application graphs,” Zafeiropoulos explains. Yet many teams still design IoT software without considering how it interacts with edge services, cloud workloads, or AI components, a critical gap in edge and cloud computing for IoT.
This gap becomes more pronounced as workloads increase in complexity. AI components are computationally heavy and cannot realistically execute on constrained devices. Instead, they must be deployed as part of a broader application graph, distributed across edge and cloud infrastructure with clear orchestration and placement decisions.
This is where IoT virtualisation and the concept of Virtual Objects become essential. Through the VOStack open source software stack, Virtual Objects abstract devices from protocols and semantic models, allowing developers to extend functionality without binding software evolution to specific hardware implementations. “Virtualisation allows you to extend device functionality without touching the hardware,” says Zafeiropoulos, a key requirement for building resilient, open source IoT platforms.
Explore IoT virtualisation and distributed architectures at OCX
In his OC for Research session at OCX, “VOStack open source Software Stack for the virtualisation of IoT devices” and “Intent Lifecycle Management Simulation Kit”, Zafeiropoulos will explore how this systems-first approach helps teams avoid architectural shortcuts that block scalability, including monolithic, device-specific software and tightly coupled designs that resist change.
If you’re attending, you will gain a clearer mental model for designing IoT systems as part of distributed application graphs across devices, edge infrastructure, and cloud platforms. You will see where common architectural shortcuts limit scalability, and how virtualisation and Virtual Objects help decouple software evolution from hardware constraints.
Join this talk in person at Open Community Experience 2026 to explore these trade-offs through concrete examples and real-world system design decisions.
