IOTech Professional Services

Accelerating Your Path to Success

IOTech’s Edge Computing Platforms deliver exceptional value through seamless IoT device connectivity; enhanced Edge data processing and analytics; flexibility and tools to develop and deploy your own applications; and multiple routes to get data to the Cloud or Enterprise IT endpoints for further analysis. 

Our Professional Services offerings are designed to offer maximum support to both Edge solution developers and end-users to get the very best out of our products. We focus on providing outstanding Operational Technology (OT) and Distributed Real-time and Embedded (DRE) skills and experience to our customers in order to reduce risks and accelerate the time-to-market of your IoT Edge developments and solution offerings.

Edge Computing can sometimes seem a very specialized and complex area, but we’re here to help you learn, make the right initial choices, quickly get started in developments and deployments, and then jointly deliver real value to you and your customers. Our consultants have many years’ experience in OT protocols, middleware and in EdgeX Foundry, the widely adopted open-source Edge standards upon which our products are based.

We provide services right across the spectrum of Edge Computing development: for example, IoT device connector use and development; application development; deployment tuning for performance and scalability; Cloud streaming and integration. We can support you on your journey with our products through initial education and training; assistance with product evaluation; implementing Edge pilots and pre-deployments; production testing and deployment support; and ongoing optimization of Edge operations.

IOTech’s other key advantage is that we are chip, hardware, and application-vendor independent, so you can be assured that you will get truly independent advice throughout your entire IoT Edge project lifecycle.

Customer On-Boarding: Discovery and Evaluation

As a first step into Edge Computing, you may simply want to talk with an experienced IoT Edge solutions expert to discuss your proposed application at the Edge and what options may be available. Send an email with a brief description of your use-case to  Support and we’ll assign one of our IoT solutions specialists, who will get in touch to discuss your application and potential routes forward through the use of our products.

We can then provide support as required (for example benchmark test results, device profiles, sample application code and templates, etc.) as you evaluate the capabilities of our Edge Xpert, Edge XRT, Edge XConnect and Edge Builder solutions.

Pilots and Pre-Deployments

When you’re ready to test that your Edge use-case can deliver the predicted return-on-investment, then IOTech is ready to help. We offer collaborative Edge Pilot and Pre-Deployment support services to help validate your potential IoT Edge Computing solution, minimising upfront costs and risks prior to any commitment to a full solution.

Typically, we can assist you with your use-case in areas such as:

• Formulate requirements and measurable success criteria for your Edge Computing Pilot.
• Provide South and Northbound connectivity profiles and simulators.
• Assist with use-case data and application development.
• Review and help tune your application for performance and scalability.
• Provide impartial advice on hardware, operating systems, and Cloud options.

IOTech regularly undertake Pilots and Pre-Deployments with our customers and partners, if necessary involving other companies  with complementary skills, and we then jointly deliver on the agreed goals with you. What’s more, our products are open and vendor-neutral, offering you complete freedom to choose IoT devices and sensors, Edge hardware, Cloud vendors and so on. Interested? Send a message to Contact Us. Full customer references are available on request.

Develop, Configure, Test and Deploy

Having chosen IOTech as your IoT Edge Computing partner, accelerating the development and deployment of your Edge product or service will be the new imperative. Our experts can help you with efficient and effective development, connectivity and integration, configuration, tuning, testing and rollout of your solution:

• Edge Application Development, Integration and Test: We can provide development templates, code review services, and turnkey development and configuration of new applications if required to help realize your solution. Our products support polyglot applications written in different languages including (but not limited to) C, C++, Go and Lua scripting.

We can also help partners accelerate adoption and onboard your existing application assets with services ranging from full outsourced integration and white-labelled product management to providing application integration assistance.

In either case, we can provide additional support over the rest of the SDLC, including tuning, testing, DevOps support, etc.

• Device Connectivity: Our products have extensive South and Northbound connectivity out-of-the-box. Southbound, our Edge XConnect.  Device Services include full support for protocols such as Modbus, MQTT, BACnet, OPC-UA and many others, with more being added with each product release. Northbound, we currently support, MQTT, REST, AMQP, Kafka and connections to e.g. AWS and Azure Clouds. Using our tooling, we can help you configure your IoT devices and connectivity for each protocol.

If the protocol connector you need doesn’t exist, then IOTech’s OT experts can help with Device Service SDK connector development, allowing new OT data sources to be integrated with our products for data normalization, data processing/analytics and further distribution.

• Platform Porting and Testing: IOTech’s products are highly portable across operating systems and Edge hardware platforms. We can carry out any porting and testing/validation activities required for specialized hardware and operating systems. We will also add the new platform to the list of IOTech’s supported platforms and manage the on-going delivery of product releases on this platform.
• Codebase Management: This service includes managing a dedicated product code base for each customer. This is particularly important for customers that deploy mission or business-critical systems and where evolution of the system must be carefully managed. In such cases, the customer cannot take the standard product maintenance releases, which may include several changes and not only atomic-level changes (such as a bug fix for a specific problem).
• Accelerated Roadmap: IOTech has our own extensive roadmap plans for our product set, with improvements and additions in areas such as core security, application, node and device management, connectivity, and further AI/analytics extensions. We are open to collaborative development in these areas and we can also offer a roadmap acceleration service to customers who need new core platform functionality to support their applications.

Consultancy and Education

IOTech’s consultants are not only experts in Edge Computing adoption and deployment, but also have extensive knowledge of the target IoT domains where our products are used. Our consultants are available to assist at any stage in your project’s lifecycle and help de-risk your technology adoption.

We offer standard workshops to help your organization through the analysis, design implementation and deployment phases of your project, as well as providing ad-hoc engagements to support a specific need.

In addition to formal workshops, IOTech offers several standard and non-standard training courses to cultivate the skills and capabilities of your team in using, developing, and successfully deploying our products.

We offer various levels of online training, depending on your needs and level of experience. If you are new to Edge Computing, then QuickStart training can bring your developers up to speed quickly. Advanced training allows your more experienced engineers to really focus on the specific details of using and deploying our products (for example, using the Device Service SDKs) and to gain a deep understanding of how to create robust, scalable, performant and ultimately successful Edge systems. If our standard training offerings don’t align with your requirements, then custom training courses tailored to your specific needs can be provided on request.

Fully Productized and Supported Offerings

Most business-critical IoT applications demand fully-tested managed software product releases, which minimise the impact of product evolution on their applications. For example, our Edge Xpert product is a commercially-supported and packaged implementation of the open-source EdgeX Foundry core platform and also has many value-adding enhancements. Edge Xpert and all our other products have full commercial support and maintenance subscriptions providing service-level guarantees for customers who value premium product quality and support.

A range of standard support packages can be purchased to fit your requirements, offering different service-level guarantees and support coverage. Customers can also customize support packages to meet their requirements, including being able to specify the most demanding service level commitments and response times; up to 24x7 coverage. See IOTech Support for more details.

Contact us to find out more or to discuss your requirements,

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