What’s not to like about Cloud based IoT Platforms?
Nothing, if you are comfortable with relying on other services and infrastructure to manage, maintain and secure your data. If lost or missing data is OK, if someone misses a notification of a song download or about a new product release, or maybe even if you are low on milk. But if you rely on up-to-date real-time data for critical decisions, then current cloud-based IoT platforms may not be the best choice. When seconds count, are you sure of your IoT infrastructure provider?
A few of the major questions or concerns with the current cloud-based IoT platforms are:
- Connectivity. How do I get my data from my devices to the Cloud based IoT environment? A lot of industrial devices do not support IoT protocols. Do I have to replace all of these devices that I have invested in just to get my data to Cloud? What if my data source is a spread sheet, a database or an existing application? What if I want to perform calculations on the data prior to transmission?
- IoT Protocol. There are more than a few. Which do I choose? Since it will be a large investment, what happens in a few years if there is a new protocol required by my IoT provider? Will the old protocol still work or will I have to reinvest in converting all my devices to the new protocol. If I decide to switch to a different cloud-based IoT provider, will my existing devices / system still work?
- Security. Is my data going to be secure from hackers, and who is controlling my data? What 3rd party partners will have access? Is SSL secure? How about TLS? Which one will work with my IoT Provider? How do I manage the certificates required by my cloud-based IoT provider? How secure are the cloud-based servers? The major players in the IoT arena are a prime target for hacking because of the wealth of data available and the visibility of their servers and infrastructure, so a single breach could expose thousands of customers including you.
- Reliability. What happens when the Internet connection or the cloud-based servers go down? Will my organization be blind for decision making? What happens when my cloud based IoT provider is under a DDOS attack? Will I be losing data that can’t get transferred to the cloud?
- Pricing. What happens if my provider decides to raise its subscription price or worse yet decides to get out of the IoT market? For the big players, IoT is just a side business.
- Tools. What tools can I use to access, display, analyze, and store my data? Only the tools provided by my subscription?
What if there existed a platform that provides you all of the advantages of connecting not only to IoT specific devices and platforms, but literally 10s of thousands of existing real time and legacy devices? What if this platform could rapidly, securely and cost-effectively transfer millions of data points per second and insure that you have all of the data maintained even when the communications between the source and destination is down, while providing N levels of redundancy? And better yet, what if it didn’t rely on 3rd parties services to handle and disseminate your data, allowing the platform to be completely managed by your own IT department or hosted in the cloud? What about a platform that offered interfaces to SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL database and the ability to generate real-time and historical applications based on .Net, HTML, JS, and iPhone and Android OS?
Open Automation Software Solution
OAS has been satisfying all of these requirements for decades and is in use in a number global fortune 100 companies, military and nuclear applications and as small as single site locations. For Reliable data transmission, Saving historical data, Analysis, Big Data, Dashboards, Reporting, Data Analysis, Trending, Alarm and Events, Alarm Notification, SCADA/HMI, OEE and many more.
OAS is based on DNA (Distributed Network Architecture)
Connectivity:
Built in protocols for major brands of Industrial PLCs and devices.
- Allen Bradley, Siemens, Modbus and more.
- OPC UA, DA, AE
- MQTT, AMQP
- MS Excel
- SCADA / HMI applications
- Databases
- .Net or Web Applications, REST and others
What Protocol to choose for my devices:
No need to decide on what protocol to use or if you have to convert all your devices. OAS supports all of the major device protocols and if your device is not supported OAS has a universal driver interface.
Security:
- With OAS only you control your data. OAS also provides built in user security to N levels.
- OAS uses secure compressed and encrypted protocol, accepted by not only the nuclear industry but also the US military.
- You can host OAS on your own servers or on any cloud base service provider of your choice.
- You can also have multiple servers in different locations or by different providers. Providing N levels of redundancy.
- Need secure one way communications (Data Diode) OAS has that covered too.
Reliability:
OAS does not assume a consistent connection. In fact a lot of our customers choose OAS for their data transmission for this reason specifically. For instance if you are logging data to a remote database using OAS and the network connection is lost all data is buffered at the source. Not just for minutes but for days or months. Once the connection is restored, the buffered data is automatically transferred to the remote database. OAS can also move data to multiple destinations through multiple networks simultaneously. Redundancy is easy using OAS.
IoT Service providers:
With OAS you own the software. No worries about prices going up or Cloud based IoT service providers leaving you high and dry.
Tools:
With the OAS Platform you have open and easy access to your data using a variety of software and development tools.
- Easily log and retrieve data with Microsoft SQL, SQL Express, Access, Oracle or MySQL.
- Easily create interactive applications using VB.Net or C# in Visual Studio with live or historical data. Applications that run securely over the LAN, WAN or internet.
- Easily create secure Web applications using HTML and/or JS to interact with Live or historical data. Web applications that are not dependent on a specific browser or development platform so you can view and interact with the web application from a verity of different platforms such as iPhone and Android devices.
- Interact with live and historical data with OAS REST interface.
- Interface with existing software applications through Web Services, APIs or Databases.
- Read and write data to existing SCADA/HMI application via APIs, OPC Client or Server.
- Read and Write data to Excel Spread sheets.
- No per seat licensing. (Unlimited Client Applications)
- Programmatically read and write live or historical data using VB.Net C# or JS.
- Programmatically configure OAS for rapid deployment of your system changes, updates and features
- Create business or analytical application to interact with live or historical data.
- Add Live and historical data to your existing applications
- Trend live or historical data in desktop or web applications.
- Create native IOS or Android applications using OAS .NET Core Components and Xamarin.
- View, acknowledge, log and preform notifications (Email, SMS or Voice) on any alarm or event
- Automatically generate reports based on events or time and automatically email the report to any number of recipients.