Why and how we standardized a Microsoft Azure architecture for IoT
As a Microsoft consultancy & service partner, we are privileged to work with different companies on enabling the potential of Internet of Things (IoT) in their advantage. But in doing so, we came to the conclusion that a lot of the development work is repetitive. So to speed up the development of IoT solutions in future projects, we decided to standardise some key software functionalities. This article will explain why and how we did it.
Why standardize an Azure architecture for IoT?
In traditional projects we are often hired by companies to build data architectures for various purposes. And due to the high variety of data types present in the organisations of clients, building custom based data architectures is often the way to go. But for the various IoT projects we did in the past, we recognised that this is different.
Standardize & automate
In the last years we have gained quite some experience in building scalable IoT solutions on Azure. But during these projects we came to the conclusion that a large part of the development was actually repetitive and had the potential to be standardized and automated. Below some general activities we always work on in setting up cloud based Azure IoT architectures:
- Building IoT data connecters;
- Setting up data storage & analytics pipelines;
- User authorisation & GDPR;
- Configuring Azure architecture & services;
- Hosting web based apps & dashboards.
Faster time to value!
In doing IoT projects, automating big parts of the software development brings some major advantages. We see the following three as our favorites:
- Time saved can potentially be used for development of other solution features (i.e. data analytics / machine learning);
- Fast testing of IoT solution prototypes, shortens time to value for business;
- It keeps the developers happy because they can work on new features and improvements😀
Especially shorter time to value has been an attractive feature to our clients. It enables them to experiment more with IoT solutions at lower cost, giving them the possibility to learn fast and add more value to their businesses.
How did we do it?
To summarize, we wanted to provide a service that would enable our customers to have a faster time to value. And from our experience, value coming from IoT solutions is most often related to having actionable insights on the data. This applies for a lot of use cases in varies industries.
IoT Insights for rapid solution development
We therefor have standardized and end-to-end data platform architecture based on Microsoft Azure Technology, called IoT Insights. IoT Insights makes it possible to build scalable IoT solutions in a period of 3–8 weeks. With the use of standardized building blocks, IoT Insights offers possibilities to rapidly build solutions all the way from Edge to App. We do this with the building blocks Edge Connect, Cloud Processed and User React.
IoT Insights is offered as a Microsoft Azure platform accelerator. It’s a proven data architecture that is extremely powerful for processing time series data, the type of data that is most often coming from IoT devices. With IoT Insights our clients are able to quickly transform their IoT data into actionable insights via reports, dashboards and/or apps. The main advantages of the IoT Insights platform according to our clients can be summarised as:
- A proven — out of the box — optimised Azure IoT Architecture;
- Reduced implementation time, thus initial investments;
- Fast and flexible configuration of data processing pipelines;
- Fast testing of solution prototypes, shortening time to value.
How can it be applied?
Digital transformation is an ongoing journey, so is the implementation of IoT within businesses. With the use of Agile working methods, we facilitate rapid development, refinement and continuous improvement of your IoT solutions. At Heroes, we enable companies to move in sprints and iterate quickly, so they can learn fast and continuously improve their IoT practices.
Intensively working together
Every company has their own value cases. With our approach we aim to explore the potential benefits of IoT value cases and build a working prototype in a matter of 3–8 weeks. But in doing so, it is very important that the business stakeholders are intensively involved. We believe that only then IoT solutions can be successfully implemented within organisations.
Their knowledge about the problem we want to solve, is especially crucial in the “Ideate” phase, where a large part of the solution direction is determined. In this phase we use Design Sprints to make ideas tangible in no-time and give you a glimpse into the future. It provides real customer insights early on in the process, instead of committing time and budget to a direction which may not be the right one.
Endless Possibilities
IoT Insights from Heroes enables companies to significantly shorten time to value when it comes to building IoT solutions. By using the building blocks of IoT Insights in combination with our design & development approach, it’s a guarantee IoT will be implemented in your business successfully. We have proven implementations in varies industries, such as:
- Smart Manufacturing: extracting data from production lines and displaying real-time the operational equipment efficiencies (OEE);
- Smart Cities: Receiving GPS-coordinates data to perform asset tracking together with geofencing technology for notifications;
- Smart Buildings: extracting data from HVAC-installations and calculating real-time energy performance efficiencies;
More information about IoT Insights can be found at the Azure market Place:
Please also check out the reference case of Building Insight | Air:
Since the future is digital, start thinking digital, start acting digital!
- Werner Vink
- iwanttobeahero@heroes.nl
- +31 857 820 449
