Global enterprise applications company IFS has unveiled a new platform that promises to shorten the development time for IoT solutions.
Dubbed the IFS IoT Business Connector, the platform provides end-to-end architecture and plug-and-play connectivity with the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite out of the box, as well as open-source APIs to allow connectivity to other IoT platforms or specialised IoT discovery applications.
Unveiled at the IFS World Conference 2016 in Gothenburg, Sweden, the platform consists of three components:
- IFS IoT Controller – which determines what actions to take when IoT data analysis reveals observations relevant to the business
- IFS IoT Gateway – which provides secure communications between the cloud-based discovery and analytics of IoT data to on-premise or cloud-based IFS products
- IFS IoT Discovery Manager – which provides additional management and monitoring capabilities when using the Azure IoT Suite as the discovery platform.
According to IFS, the platform will allow users to harness the data gathered from products, assets and equipment to identify actionable observations that trigger user-defined, automated or semi-automated workflows.
The IFS IoT Business Connector will be released to market in early 2017. However, a number of early-adopter businesses are in the process of implementing the new platform, including international midwater drilling contractor Songa Offshore, factory maintenance and IT services provider ATS, and North American metal mining company Hecla Mining.
IFS CTO Dan Matthews said in a statement: “By working with our customers and partners we are able to connect the dots so that investments in IoT not only yield piles of data and pretty charts, but result in real actions that are co-planned and executed in an optimal way together with everything else that is going on in a business.”
