NineTwoThree Case Study: Industrial IoT Hardware Manufacturer and Industry 4.0 Services Provider

After decades of showing promise as the “next big thing,” the Internet of Things is finally starting to make an impact in the technology world. However, instead of home automation powering the concept of the smart home, the IoT enjoys its biggest influence in the business world. Intriguing use cases abound for the IoT in industry sectors like healthcare, agriculture, automotive, and manufacturing. 

In fact, the IoT in the manufacturing world boasts a slightly different moniker, known as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Companies in this space leverage remote devices connected to a network for a multitude of purposes. For example, the remote control and monitoring of factory equipment allow the tracking of use for proactive maintenance and repair purposes. The benefits of this approach include a double bonus of higher productivity and significant cost savings. 

Companies wanting to take full advantage of the IIoT need high-level technology talent with skills and experience in the area. This includes a mix of software engineering ability, networking, the cloud, data analytics, and sometimes embedded device programming. Considering the difficulty of sourcing this talent in the IT job market, partnering with a digital agency with these capabilities makes perfect sense. This is why NineTwoThree combined our experience with that of our client to solve their IIoT business problem, ultimately reaching the market with higher velocity.

Partnering with a Venture Studio to Expand IoT Expertise

Technology businesses sometimes face a variety of difficult problems on a project, adding a measure of risk to the initiative. In the case of the Industrial Internet of Things, recruiting software engineers and IoT networking experts remains difficult in the current job market. Even so, bringing this talent on board as permanent employees makes little sense, if only needing their services for this specific project.  

In the case of this project, the client already boasted IoT expertise. However, they needed skills in specific functions of IIoT when considering the scope of the entire undertaking. While hiring a few experienced software engineers on temporary contracts offers one possible solution, attempting to integrate a disparate group of tech professionals adds a measure of complexity to any project.

For this specific scenario, the business benefited from partnering with a venture studio able to provide an entire team of IoT engineers and data scientists to ensure the project’s successful completion. This approach made the integration of both teams an easier and seamless process. As a result, the combined team successfully met the goals of the project, working together in a productive manner. 

The Challenges of IIoT Hardware Management 

Like most other IoT or IIoT initiatives for business, this project focused on collecting data from a wide array of connected devices on a network. Being able to glean actionable information from this data in a real-time fashion remains a key reason companies now explore similar undertakings. However, the massive amount of the generated data needing to be transmitted, scrubbed, and analyzed requires a discerning approach. 

In fact, one of the biggest challenges of the project related to that last point. Building a data pipeline able to read, process, and store large amounts of data from a multitude of devices provided a large hurdle for the project team to clear. Overall system performance is critical, especially when considering seamless interaction with remote devices remains one of the hallmarks of any high-quality IoT system.

Another project difficulty involved the wide range of frequencies the various IoT devices use to transmit data. Some devices operate at very low frequencies of only 1 Hz. Others use the typical frequency (over 10 kHz) found in other IIoT devices. Unfortunately, the lower frequency devices might send up to 10 different data values, while the other devices send upwards of 1,000 different values over various telemetry channels. Needless to say, interpreting this data in real-time became very challenging.   

Additionally, the entire system needed the capability to process and store the data in a format facilitating the extraction of actionable information. Determining what data to process at once versus data to retain in its original form for historical purposes also mattered. Notably, users of the system need the capability to analyze one week or month of data at a time.  

Data Serves as The Lifeblood of This IIoT Platform 

In fact, this historical data feeds the machine learning models at the heart of the business problem the system strives to solve. It informs the data analysis necessary for predictive maintenance, one of the major business benefits of the system. For example, the fact that historical data needs to be transferred to an analytics engine upon request fed the requirements for the data pipeline mentioned earlier. 

Notably, the data analytics functionality of the platform drove the design and construction of various features. These included data visualizations on dashboards, charts, and tables. It ultimately required a host of custom HTML to build the different views used for data analysis. The system also must balance the need for retaining historical data against the data warehouse-like storage model used for analysis. 

This data migration process required optimization to provide the top-shelf performance and seamless experience demanded by users. This same rule also applied to the data dashboards and reporting elements themselves. Importantly, testing revealed that too much data caused the tables and charts to freeze. 

Additionally, the platform included a functionality that lets each user create and store their own data visualizations. This feature provided an important level of usability, enhancing the effectiveness of the entire system. Notably, the system even supports software engineers from the client’s customers adding their own customized charts and visualization functionality depending on the needs of their user base.

The project scope also included the development of customized data pipelines for event alerting purposes. This requirement caused the design of an alarm and alerting system that boasts a rules-based engine to allow users to tailor the types of notifications sent by the system. All told, considering the robust feature set of this IIoT platform, the client definitely needed a partnership with a talented and experienced venture studio to augment their existing team. Enter NineTwoThree.  

NineTwoThree Helps Solve Crucial Business and Technical Challenges 

After explaining the breadth and depth of the technical solution, the client still faced a critical dilemma. They simply lacked the right mix of technical talent to develop a robust and complex IIoT platform that met the design requirements. After deciding to work with NineTwoThree, the two groups needed to combine their skills and experience into one effective project team. 

The ultimate goal also involved the IIoT solution reaching the marketplace as quickly as possible. This high velocity made perfect sense when considering the rapid expansion of the IoT market over the last few years. Any new product obviously stands a better chance of success if it gets released before any potential competitors. 

Certain technical aspects of NineTwoThree’s experience paid crucial dividends on the project. For example, any IoT or IIoT platform needs to be flexible when it comes to supporting communication protocols. Remember the importance of seamless interaction with remote devices in an IIoT solution. Our experience with MQTT and other protocols provided a missing link on this project. 

Additionally, the needs of the project included a flexible database solution supporting a few critical requirements. These included fast migration between the stored historical data and the platform used for data analysis. A NoSQL solution made more sense than a traditional SQL approach, with Kafka handling the transmission of real-time data feeds. Our experience with Kafka and the Cassandra NoSQL database platform helped us achieve this important project goal.  

Importantly, the entire IIoT solution supports a cloud-agnostic approach. The provides significant flexibility for the client’s customer base, ensuring the entire solution infrastructure resides in one place. Additionally, the solution remains compatible with a wide array of cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, Prisma, and more. The fact NineTwoThree is an AWS partner also helped since AWS provides the horsepower for fast back-end data processing. 

Notably, the technical aspects of this situation illustrated how NineTwoThree’s expertise helped solve the pressing business problems our client faced. Sure, the extra hands on deck helped, but we also provided the crucial technical expertise that complimented the client’s own IoT engineering background. Partnering with an experienced technical team remains a useful approach for any business looking to launch a great product as quickly as possible. 

A Partnership With NineTwoThree Helped Reach the Market Faster

Again, a robust design for a complex IIoT platform outstripped the current capabilities of our client partner. Of course, they had the technical insights to design an effective solution for remote data collection and analytics in real-time. However, they simply lacked enough software engineering talent to complete the project within the allotted timeline. This is why partnering with a digital agency with top-shelf IoT software engineering skills and experience made perfect sense. 

Throughout the project, we provided critical technical horsepower and keen business insights to ensure the initiative crossed the finish line in enough time to make a significant market impact. Of course, one problem involved right-sizing the project team to meet the project’s timeline. 

However, just as important as the specific technology experience we brought to the table, complementing the client’s own team. Consider a similar approach and partnership with us to ensure your next business idea results in success.