September 30, 2019
Octave, Smart Cities, Utilities
Early Octave reviews are now coming in from the companies who have been testing the IoT data orchestration platform since it was first previewed in December 2018. Their feedback? By giving them all the infrastructure they need for an IoT application—including edge devices, wireless network connectivity, and cloud APIs—in a single package, Octave cuts through the complexity that has often slowed the development and deployment of IoT applications. Octave makes it much easier for these companies to extract the right IoT data from their edge devices, at the right time, and then transmit it to the right system.
BM COM, a European-based system integrator/developer of IoT/M2M and augmented reality applications, is one of the early Octave users. According to David Mansfeld, Managing Partner at BM COM, one of the firm’s major challenges in IoT application Proof of Concept (POC) development has been dealing with the complexities related to collecting data from their customers’ edge devices and then integrating this data into their PTC ThingWorx based system, which they use to create IoT data visualization solutions for their customers. For instance, BM COM often has to update their APIs when customers provide them with data from new types of devices. In addition, addressing customer requests to change the type of data extracted from edge devices, or change the timing of when this data is extracted, can lead to a significant amount of extra work for them.
As Mansfeld explains, “Any company working to build IoT applications faces many of the same challenges. Integrating sensor and other device data into your application. Procuring and configuring SIM cards. Making sure you have reliable cellular connectivity. Getting the devices to transmit the data when you want them to. These challenges eat up development time and resources, slowing your development process and increasing costs.”
Mansfeld says his team at BM COM immediately saw how Octave could help them address these challenges the first time they used it.
“With Octave, everything was easy to set up,” said Mansfeld. “The very first time we plugged in the Sierra Wireless edge device and used Octave to connect it to our solution, it worked. The entire process took less than a day.”
Mansfeld added, “Being able to immediately get the data we want from an edge device, when we want it, will significantly speed up the testing of IoT application POCs for us. Perhaps just as importantly, we think Octave will not only make building and testing IoT applications easier for us but will simplify application management and updates for our customers over these applications’ lifetimes.”
BM COM works with mobile network operators (MNOs) and other companies in Europe and the Middle East on a wide variety of smart city, smart metering, smart agriculture, and other IoT applications. It is considering using Octave in the future for applications like these—not just to accelerate the development of the IoT application POCs, but also to quickly scale these POCs to commercial applications on thousands of edge devices.
“Octave appears to be the perfect complement to our IoT data visualization solution,” said Mansfeld. “With Octave, we now have an opportunity to offer our customers a comprehensive A-to-Z solution that includes edge device, connectivity, and cloud in a single package.”
Added Mansfeld, “If you are a company that wants to build and deploy IoT applications fast, you should be looking at Octave. It provides you with an end-to-end platform for quickly getting the data you need, when you need it, from your edge devices to the cloud—allowing you to focus on doing whatever you want with this data.”
David Mansfeld will join executives from Axibio and Microsoft on a panel at the Sierra Wireless Innovation Summit in Paris on Oct. 24th to share his experiences working with Octave. Visit the Innovation Summit website to explore the agenda and to register.
Start with Sierra to learn more about how Octave simplifies IoT application testing and deployment, empowering you to reimagine the future with data-driven digital transformation.
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