Most Frequent Questions and Concerns of Today's IoT Customers

The Industrial Internet of Things is a quite complex domain and something new for most of the people. Our vision is to enable IoT applications for everyone. Therefore we strive to reduce said complexity already during the first customer conversations. Over the 9 years with azeti, I had the opportunity to answer a lot of early customer questions and in this article I’ll walk you through the top ones. In case you’ve got further questions, please reach out to me and let's have a chat!

Question topics range from simple, like 

"How much does it cost?"

to hot topics like

 "Do you support China Mainland?".

How much does it cost?

We offer a scalable and straightforward pricing model based on the monthly consumption of actual data points received by azeti Cloud. Upgrading and downgrading are easy, and you can even try it for free. We are happy to discuss custom pricing if your business model requires a different setup.

Where is the azeti Cloud hosted?

We are a certified Amazon AWS partner and host our azeti Cloud in the Frankfurt region.

I don't like Cloud, can I run your software in my data centre, on-premise?

Yes absolutely, the azeti Cloud Software can be deployed on-premise as well as on all major Cloud Providers (e.g. Amazon AWS, Microsoft AZURE, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud). Our team is happy to help with best practices. Even a deployment in China Mainland is supported with Alibaba Cloud.

Is my data secure?

Yes, it is. Let me walk you through the building blocks that ensure data security and minimize attack surfaces.

Team & Research:  Our team includes encryption experts (Hi Michi!) and is engaged in research projects that focus on Edge security (Secure Fog Research Project).

Technology: Our edge software, azeti Site Controller, authenticates with a combination of a device Identifier, username, password and an organization Identifier towards azeti Cloud. Certificates ensure the authenticity of our azeti Cloud systems and avoid man in the middle attacks. Each customers organization data is isolated and protected on our platform. User logins can be secured with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and their access controlled through privilege roles. 

TÜV approved: The german TÜV Süd did a thorough security audit of our azeti Software stack. Their security experts did a series of penetration tests and did not succeed in capturing data or even breaking in. We trust our security measures deeply and therefore provided administrative access to the security engineers with the challenge to capture data from another customer organization (a tenant). Our systems stood strong, no customer data was revealed! The audit itself helped us to further improve our security measures. Thanks to our premier partner Norican Digital (check out their sophisticated Industrial IoT applications, powered by azeti and driven by their outstanding domain expertise) with whom we partnered for this endeavour.

We have plenty of old machinery, do you support retrofitting?

Yes, absolutely and we are happy to support you with our 7+ years of IoT retrofit experience. Several challenging projects (e.g. Monitoring in the Jamaican Jungle - Screencast) allowed us to optimize our solution for retrofitting use cases.

Our machines use custom protocols, can I connect these?

Yes. Quite often, proprietary protocols impose a challenge for IoT projects. Our software API makes it easy for developers to create custom protocol adapters. We offer development services too. Several protocol adapters have been added over the years by our customers and us, for example, custom ProfiNET based protocols, special PLC connectors, database systems and even GPS modems. 

Do you support Edge-computing?

Yes, the azeti Site Controller is an extensive edge software with support for all common protocols (including PLC's, sensors and databases), data filtering and an extensive scripting API. It supports zero-touch deployment for large scale projects too. 

How long do you store sensor data?

The duration of data storage is quite different depending on the requirement. We can store data for 30 days to several years. Some customers retain data for three years. This is very individual. We are happy to provide the right setup for your business case.

What languages do you support?

As of this writing, English, German, Spanish and Mandarin are supported. Our translation API makes it easy to add new languages.

Do you support China Mainland?

Yes, we do for larger customer projects and offer support to get started with IoT services in China Mainland.

Do you support certificates like UL for North America and CCC for China?

We would be happy to recommend hardware that is CE, UL and CCC certified and thus suitable for use in all major markets, including mainland China and North America. Thanks to our partner network, we can always offer customers the right components for their needs.

Can I integrate my existing business applications (i.e. ERP, CRM, MES and the like)?

Yes, we offer several APIs to inject and export data and we are adding 3rd party integrations constantly.

Do you support machine learning?

Yes, our API's allow machine learning experts to quickly get bulk and streaming data via JSON data. All data is structured and clean, so Data Scientists can focus on the learning rather than the data cleanup

Did you know that Data Scientists spend up to 60% of their time cleaning data (according to Forbes Magazine and several studies).

How much do I have to program?

Zero, our vision is to Enable IoT for Everyone and to reduce complexity. Our system is built to allow everyone to connect their data and implement their use cases without programming or engineering.

Can I bring my own code?

Yes, we offer several API's (i.e. RESTful, GraphQL, MQTT) and will support more and more custom code down the road. We encourage developers to add their own logic and even write their own modules for our edge software or add Javascript and HTML code for custom dashboard widgets. 

Can we white label your software under our brand?

We do support white labelling by request and even offer running on-premise with your own domains. But bare with me, we will release full white labelling capabilities this summer so you can set your logos, colours and branding.

What analytics do you support?

All received data is automatically structured, allowing in-depth analytics across all your connected machines and their data. You can start with simple analytics like Averages, Minimum and Maximum and progress up to descriptive statistics (Standard Deviations, Integrals, Aggregations). You can even dive deep with the inclusion of your own machine learning models or your own custom KPI script for your business logic.