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IoT83 Continuum of Capabilities and Services

By August 9, 2021November 24th, 2022No Comments

A Continuum of Capability, Service & Operation

Successful IoT programs are almost never a one shot activity, where you build an application and leave it. Normally engaging in IoT and digital transformation projects are a journey, or as we say at IoT83, a Continuum! So, you need a continuum of platform and solution capabilities and services that provide for both short-term and long-term success.

For a company-wide IoT journey, you leverage multiple big-data tools & underlying plumbing for an Always-On service, and are planning to continue to enhance & expand your applications and solutions over time for multiple customers, applications, and even entire markets – you need a solution simplifies complexities and actually helps you succeed. At IoT83, we believe you need a Continuum of Capabilities & Services – and that is what we built our Application Enablement Platforms (AEP) & Services to provide. 

A First Look at the Continuum Concept

The diagram below illustrates how most customers would like to see their IoT programs evolve.

A Virtuous Cycle – Starting the Continuum and Driving Iterative Value & Capability

First, use an agile process to define a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) as a proof point for what is viewed by key stakeholders to address real customer or market needs.

This is the first piece of the Continuum: Fast development and deployment is very important to allow for the iterations that may be needed to hit the mark is MVP customer/market validation. So you need a platform and workflow that enable this.

But once this cycle is complete, you don’t want your output to just be a mock-up – you want to actually be able to polish this MVP based on customer/market feedback and launch it! This is the second piece of the Continuum – actually building your MVP in an environment that is the actual launch vehicle. This way, once you have something real and important, you are immediately ready to reliably / securely launch your application at whatever scale you need.

Looking back at the diagram above, iterative cycles of implementation are implied. In fact, at IoT83, we view it as best practice to identify a healthy but not over-large set of important features and quickly integrate the application to encompass that capability – with a working solution at the end of each cycle.

So the essential third piece of the Continuum is a platform that allows such an iterative release / enhance / validate / upgrade cycle with minimum friction in maintaining your existing application while you enhance and validate your enhancements. A very high-level view of the IoT83 AEP that makes this Continuum possible is shown below:

At this stage the project is already off the ground and working for your customers. At this point, as incremental feature requests, requests to expand your IoT Solution across your portfolio, or even requests to build new separate applications roll in, the fourth and perhaps most important piece of the Continuum come squarely into play. The fourth component of the Continuum is a bit more complex – it is the dimensionality of your platform, process, and workflow.

Continuum Essential Dimensionality Components

Following initial IoT launches, the volume & complexity of your IoT activities can increase, and you need a platform, process, and workflow that makes this easy – not hard.

The Flex83 AEP’s multiple capabilities, tools and workflows provide this Continuum of support across multiple dimensions. Here is a short list of some of the support Flex83 provides:

  1. Flex83 provides intuitive application tools and workflows to get your solution up and running fast. These tools range from click-to-configure no-code tools, to citizen developer no-code tools with multiple language support across the full range of application creation functions. From connecting devices, flows & application interworking, to data transformation and storage, to analytics, to AI & ML, to dashboard creation, to building and launching applications, the it is all there in the AEP.
  2. Anything built using the AEP is automatically ready for a secure / reliable / scaled launch because it is already running on top of the proven IoT83 elastic core.
  3. The platform streamlines creation and hosting of low-code functions that can be written in multiple languages such as JavaScript, node.JS, Python, Perl, React, Angular, and more.
  4. Applications written on top of the AEP use open standards, can be authored by your own team or for you by IoT83 – but they are portable and are your intellectual property.
  5. The Identity Access Management, Application Creation, and Data Separation components of the platform make it easy to create multi-tenant, multi-device, and multi-use applications. This flexibility is there – even if you don’t use it at first.
  6. A full CI/CD process is provided to streamline development cycles, and tools are provided to manage releases into code repositories protecting your program and your IP.
  7. The IoT83 services team is always available as a very fast and efficient complement to your resources to build solutions fast, but the tools and workflows in the AEP were built for customers to use! You can also combine our Services with your team to accelerate building your team’s expertise on the platform as well as on IoT design patterns in general.
  8. The Felx83 AEP has integrated DevOps services to assure the Always-On availability of your application. Each process and system node as well as the health of the overall process is monitored with multiple detailed views available to your or our DevOps teams.
  9. Because the IoT83 AEP was built using open source and open standards, it is completely portable. As such, it can be run on public clouds such as AWS, Azure, or Google, run on customer clouds, or even ported to on-premise appliances, allowing you to follow the most sensible path for your market and customer needs.
  10. The IoT83 platforms also have very flexible licensing options. The full suite can be run from our Flex83 SaaS option, can be deployed using a dedicated enterprise license in public or private clouds, and the AEP code itself can also be purchased.

Again, this is just a summary. IoT83 is focused on providing this Continuum and Dimensionality because we believe this is essential to customer success for IoT and digital transformation program long-term success – and importantly, for customer piece of mind. A high level view of the Flex83 AEP that enables this Continuum of Development is shown here:

The Continuum of Speed & Efficiency: Flex83 RAD Solution

The Flex83 platform provides a solid underlying IoT elastic core, combined with AEP fast application enablement tools and workflows that allow development at a truly Agile pace – enabling the dramatic benefits of RAD. With the reliable / flexible / scalable underlying IoT platform and the powerful integrated AEP tools, very fast application development cycles are possible, customer validation can be near real-time, and everything is – always – ready to launch and scale on the underlying high performance platform.

The Continuum of Application and Solution Interworking

The Flex83’s No-Code / Low-Code / Full-Code application development models and workflows work allow not only stand-alone IoT application creation, but also, using the built-in Connectors and API Creation allows applications to interwork with other enterprise software, third party systems, other middleware, business insight tools, or whatever the unique and end-to-end total solution may require. An illustration of this follows:

The Flex83’s No-Code / Low-Code / Full-Code application development models and workflows work allow not only stand-alone IoT application creation, but also, using the built-in Connectors and API Creation allows applications to interwork with other enterprise software, third party systems, other middleware, business insight tools, or whatever the unique and end-to-end total solution may require. An illustration of this follows:

Conclusions

At IoT83, we take this concept of a Continuum seriously. We believe our clients need such a Continuum for multiple essential reasons:

  • To enable the rapid creation of applications that are by default, ready to launch
  • To accelerate an iterative approach to application enhancement and improvement
  • To allow customers to scale at their own pace and only pay for what they need
  • To provide a great means to differentiate – and own the IP of that differentiation
  • To provide solutions that fit your needs – SaaS, Enterprise, or Appliance licensing

Discover more about the capabilities and value that the IoT83 and the Flex83 Application Enablement Platform can deliver to your busines