IOT CLOUD PLATFORM

BRIEF INTRODUCTION:
Companies that want to deliver differentiated connected products or transform business processes, face serious challenges when having to choose and design from a fragmented set of network technologies, hardware, protocols, software, applications, and analytics solutions. Therefore Glaze helps design and implement IoT Cloud Platforms and simplify deploying, managing and operating these cloud platforms. Glaze can tailor a complete custom Industrial IoT cloud platform or we can use our own reference platform (Beacon Tower) as either a stepping stone or as an out-of-the-box solution.

Whether it is a custom solution or based on our own Beacon Tower we have a go-to process that spans from business case development to implementation, operations and maintenance and we have zoomed in on the IoT Cloud part of the process in this figure Glaze IoT Cloud Platform Process. The process is based on experiences with launching numerous global IoT Cloud solutions for leading Scandinavian companies.

FURTHER ELABORATION:
In volatile market conditions, conservative industrial giants must move faster to survive. The digital transformation of traditional manufacturing firms cannot — and must not — simply be about making existing industrial processes more efficient. These organizations must recognize the opportunity to use digital services as a way to create more sustainable and profitable customer relationships, continuously aligning product value to changing customer requirements.

But the physical products (and the hard-won industrial skills that created them) don’t go away. A rich digital experience does not replace a well-built premium car or a dependable and resilient piece of industrial machinery. Rather, digital services augment the product and enable designing, building, selling, using, and valuing it in new ways. While the physical products certainly endure, the companies that built them must change to survive, investing in digital services and baking it deeply into everything they do. IoT is core to industrial companies’ efforts to bridge the divide between the physical and the virtual. Glaze’s IoT Cloud Platform Services helps the design of connected products and create connected insights.

The typical scenarios are illustrated here with our Beacon Tower set-up as Edge and Cloud platform:

he challenge is not to establish an IoT Cloud Platform in a matter of days. All major Cloud Providers have accelerators and preconfigured solutions, that makes this possible. And most sensor manufacturers offer some sort of Cloud solution as part of their service.

The challenge is to establish a flexible, scalable and cost-effective platform that will be a good platform for further analysis and use of the data.

At Glaze, we are working intensively with IoT Cloud Platforms and we know the pitfalls – having worked in this area since 2015. All too often, IoT Data Collection is implemented without proper consideration of the various options available. We know that it is important to have realistic expectations to the journey. A design that is chosen, without proper experience and analysis, often ends up being too costly thus creating an obvious risk that the IoT Business Case is discontinued for the wrong reasons. Another mistake, we have seen often, is to choose a closed platform, where data ends up, isolated in a silo, making data analysis, predictive maintenance or remote monitoring, machine learning and integration with business IT, practically impossible.

That is why we recommend to :

  • Evaluate the requirements for your IoT Cloud Platform, hereunder  to fully understand edge and business IT integration points
  • Minimize the risk by using standard solutions
  • Maintain ownership and access to the data

At Glaze, we have established a starting point for an IoT Cloud Platform, based on our experiences from the projects we have been involved in. We continue to adjust the platform based on development in the Ecosystems and the experiences from our projects. We call this platform Beacon Tower. It includes solutions to many of the things that need to be considered – Device Provisioning, Asset Management and Multi Tenancy are the most obvious, but also the choice of the right database, management and visualisation for time series data is very important.

So let us help you with valuable process, architecture and implementation experiences within:

  • Sensor and Edge (e.g. PLC, SCADA, MES, DCS, Historians) Integration
  • Device Provisioning
  • Digital Twin
  • Asset Management
  • Multi Tenancy
  • Data Retention procedures
  • Time Series Database and Presentation
  • Alarms and notifications
  • API for User Management
  • API for Business Integration
MORE INFORMATION:

Managing Partner, Jakob Appel, jakob.appel@glazeholding.com, +45 26 17 18 58