A Capability Model for TAPPaaS

Introduction

TAPPaaS is designed both top down and bottom up. Top down we looked at the capabilities needed to address the needs described in the Vision. The bottom up have been looking at real software and real implementations to determine what is possible and what makes sense

We are trying to bring this together in a structured manner. This is a description of WHAT we want TAPPaaS to deliver. The HOW to deliver it is in the SoftwareStack

TAPPaaS high level structure

As with most complex IT solutions you can divide the capabilities of the solution into some dependent sub system. At the very high level we structure the capabilities into the following groups

classDiagram
  TAPPaaS *-- Security
  TAPPaaS *-- Services
  TAPPaaS *-- Management
	Security ..> Foundation
	Services ..> Foundation
  Management ..> Foundation

In the following we decompose the high level capabilities

Services

Services is what this is all about: Providing IT functions to the users of TAPPaaS. all the other parts like Foundation, Management and Security is just there to ensure that you can get the IT you need working in a stable, scalable, integrated, secure, private and maintainable way.

What services are essential to each deployment of TAPPaaS will differ, but we define a set of services that TAPPaaS should support based on the typical deployment. You can configure what is relevant for you deployment.

These examples of deployments are just examples, where we try and highlight the essential functionality that you need for that kind of deployment.

classDiagram
  A Home ..> TAPPaaS
  Small Community ..> TAPPaaS
  Small Business Owner ..> TAPPaaS
  Small SW Development Organization ..> TAPPaaS
  Small Utility Company ..> TAPPaaS
  NGO ..> TAPPaaS

Note we are using the word “small” a lot. Make no mistake, TAPPaaS as a core architecture can scale up, but our initial design criteria is to cater for the SMB/Home out of the box.

Capabilities needed by a home

Services can be grouped into functionality that is linked to a physical home, and thus stays with home and functionality that is linked to a user but is not bound to the physical home (except through the foundation layer and possible integrations)

classDiagram
		A Home *-- PhysicalHome
		A Home *-- Household Member

So the functions we are aiming at:

smart lighting
smart heat system
Smart Sprinkler system
Weather monitoring
Smart AVR
House Butler (AI)

Email: you want to own you emails and email address
Address book
Calendering: need to be sharable within home and community and externally
Note taking: must be sharable
photo upload, storage and sharing: Need to have good indexing and sharing functionality
music library: own your music, need to be stream-able. and sharable
video library
podcast library
Document store: Can be very private or shared across a user group
Offline web: ability to remember interesting parts of the web, and store for later (offline) reading.
Virtual Assistant: you personal AI in a box
eBook bookshelf

Small Community

Note a small community can start with a single home, and will contain all the functionality of a Home deployment of TAPPaaS

However with a Community deployment you would want to add a few more functionalities

WiFi rooming: Make it possible to move around the community and preserve access to same Wifi
Internet sharing (with redundancy): 10 households having 10 Internet connections is overkill
Public book shelf: Local hosted Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, …. Ensure access to information in case of internet outage
Community Social
Video Conferencing

SMB

Corporate email
Office Suite: document, presentation and spreadsheet with collaboration features and Microsoft compatibility
Corporate web site
ERP system
Office WiFi: Ensure there is a dedicated WiFi for SMB workers and guests
Corporate VPN
Video Conferencing
Chat

Software Development

Git Repository
CI-CD
Chat
Backlog management
Application Platform
Reverse Proxy

Small Utility

Industrial Strength Firewall
Network separation (VLANs)
VPN

NGO

Generally an NGO need the same functionality out of the box as the SMB, but there are important design criteria

Strict Privacy
Easy to setup and maintain
Cost efficient
Remote deployment and backup
must function without internet access

Security

We separate between the physical security and virtual security measures we need in a Home. The Physical security can be considered a Business function.

Physical Security

Video Surveillance
Electronic locks
Door Camera and Ring
Neighborhood Threat monitoring

Virtual Security

User and Access Management: Includes 2FA
Password and key management: For end users, ensure the organization is not relying on postIT notes
Backup - Restore
Firewall
Encryption of private data at rest and in transit
Remote access and VPN services
Threat detection
Threat monitoring
DMZ with Reverse Proxy

Management

Dashboard
Operational monitoring
Update and patch management

Foundation

Unbreakable Power
Compute
Storage
Connectivity
- VLAN separations
- WAN and Firewall
- Switch and Access Points
- DHCP and DNS
CICD for configuring and installing TAPPaaS