IoT Composable Applications

IoT Catalyst Studio: The composable IoT technology for your composable IoT business

Gartner has included composable technologies as one of the "emerging trends of 2022". Composable technologies are part of a broader discourse, as Gartner defines them as one of the enablers of "composable business."

 "Composable business means creating an organization made from interchangeable building blocks. The modular setup enables a business to rearrange and reorient as needed depending on external (or internal) factors like a shift in customer values or a sudden change in the supply chain or materials. "

 A company that wants to adopt this new model must be able to count on three building blocks:

·        Composable thinking, which keeps you from losing your creativity. Anything is composable. When you combine the principles of modularity, autonomy, orchestration, and discovery with composable thinking, it should guide your approach to conceptualizing what to compose and when.

·        Composable business architecture ensures that your organization is built to be flexible and resilient. It’s about structure and purpose. These are structural capabilities — giving you mechanisms to use in architecting your business.

·        Composable technologies are the tools for today and tomorrow. They are the pieces and parts and what connects them all. The four principles are product design goals driving the features of technology that support the notions of composability.

Suggesting the full reading of Gartner's paper on composable enterprises, we want now to focus here on composable technologies.

Composable technologies are microservices, Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs), and Composable Applications.

 Let us give a definition of these terms first and then discuss how these modern techniques are helpful for companies today.

1.   Microservices – smaller applications deployed independently as loosely connected services, connected through application integration. Microservices are smaller in scope and size, which makes it easier for developers to improve them through continuous development, integration, and delivery. They can communicate with other microservices through APIs.
2. Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs) – Gartner defines PBCs as a software component that represents a well-defined business capability, recognizable as such by a business user and consists of a bounded collection comprising a data schema and a set of services, APIs, and event channels. A PBC involves grouping of APIs that serve a specific business capability as against microservices that are more tightly scoped and granular. A microservice is a smaller piece while PBCs comprise more than one microservice packaged together.
3. Composable Applications – PBCs become the building block of composable applications which gives the much-needed agility for companies to quickly build and integrate the changing requirements. The composable architecture enables a plug-n-play model where PBCs can be quickly reconfigured and reassembled with ease. That is the reason why “composable applications” is among the list top technology trend of 2022. How does it help the business? They enable businesses to align quickly with rapid business changes by being faster to market.

IoT Catalyst Studio was one of the first technologies ever to bring the concept of composable architecture to the IoT field in 2018

Now we will see how. But first, let's start with the introductions.

What is IoT Catalyst Studio?

IoT Catalyst Studio is an IoT Edge Application Management platform for creating and managing future-proof IoT edge computing solutions where things, devices, edge applications, and external systems are connected effectively and securely to create a future-proof, cohesive IoT domain.

• Low code / No Code : IoT Catalyst Studio offers low code/node technologies to create edge applications dramatically faster and easier. An edge application can be anything: a business logic that runs at the edge in a fully managed way like an IoT driver, an ML algorithm, a database query, an RPA routine ... whatever you can code in Python can be an edge application! Whatever it is, IoT Catalyst makes high-speed and easy the whole DevOps lifecycle thanks to its low code / no code IDE and its browser-based control plane.
•  Model Driven and Digital Twins: IoT Catalyst adopts the concept of Digital Twins and provides users with an assisted, lightning-fast model-driven design methodology to create digital twins of their assets. Every edge application has an associated digital model to guarantee interoperability and to make the creation of composable applications possible. A digital model is a collection of settings, data, actions, functions, alerts, and postprocessors that define the full capabilities of the edge application.
• Edge-to-Core Runtime Integrations: IoT Catalyst Studio is the only edge platform that creates IoT edge applications that can connect in real-time to one or more external applications with no break in service. Using IoT Catalyst Studio, it is possible to perform device onboarding and activate bidirectional communication with any external system (e.g., Azure IoT, AWS IoT, SCADA system, Etc.) without being an expert! Integration with external systems and platforms is thus possible thanks to the IoT Catalyst Adapter technology that directly connects edge applications and central systems (e.g., an IoT platform, a dashboarding system, a SCADA system, Etc.). Edge applications and central systems are always connected directly, with no intermediaries, and secured by a security policy endorsed by design.
•  IoT DevOps and IoT Device Management in one product : An overview of the entire edge ecosystem of devices and applications in one place. Real-time status, software versioning, technical details, logs, location, real-time access to remote consoles, health monitoring, and more. IoT Catalyst Studio offers much more than a traditional device Management tool.

Is IoT Catalyst Studio a composable technology?

 To answer this question, we must first explain how the IoT edge application creation process takes place in IoT Catalyst Studio.

In IoT Catalyst Studio, each application is designed following an assisted, model-driven methodology.

The design starts from a user-defined cyber model that describes the entire capabilities of an edge application.

The model is a collection of settings, data, events, alerts, postprocessors, actions, and functions, where:

• A Setting is a value that can be changed at runtime causing the reboot of the edge application. E.g. COM port, baudrate, Modbus RTU address etc.
• Data are the pieces of information produced by the edge application. For instance, in the case of an IoT driver data can be temperature, pressure, humidity, etc.
• An Event is a boolean variable (a variable that can be true/false) and describes the occurrence of an event like “door open,” “out of stock” etc.,
• An Alert is an edge computed Boolean variable (true/false) derived from a DATA or an EVENT. Computation of Alerts is performed at the edge.
• A post-processor is an edge-computed scalar derived from a DATA element of the model. Computation of the post-processors is performed at the edge. Useful to compute on-edge transformation and conversions.
• Action is the equivalent of a class method performed by the edge application. Can receive up to 5 params. E.g., «Send Email», «Raise the volume» etc.
• A function is a business logic that performs a calculation and returns a value. Can receive up to 5 params. E.g., «Check availability stock of product X».

Once defined the cyber model, IoT Catalyst Studio helps the user to link a specific business logic to each element of the cyber model. This is the “coding” phase of the edge application. It is a straightforward process and does not require programming skills thanks to IoT Catalyst Studio low code / no code technologies.

The result is an edge application template, i.e., an “IoT Catalyst Digital Thing” ready to be deployed and executed on remote edges.

 An Edge Application is thus managed by IoT Catalyst Studio as a collection of atomic digital bricks, that are defined in the cyber-model and coded in the implementation logic.

 The most important thing is that each atomic digital brick (e.g., an event, a setting, an action, Etc.) is addressable and manageable using MQTT channels, IoT Catalyst APIs, or the JavaScript and Python SDKs.

 This means that it is possible to create an edge application, deploy it to a remote edge, and interact in real-time with almost no effort.

 We have just described how IoT Catalyst Studio creates an IoT Edge Application with data schema and a set of services, APIs, and event channels… exactly like the Packaged Business Capabilities referenced by Gartner!

 Thanks to the model-driven design and the implementation of business logic as a collection of atomic digital bricks, edge applications created with IoT Catalyst Studio are composable.

Users can create new edge applications that can embed, and reuse capabilities of other edge applications already created: this makes the development of IoT solutions even faster and more flexible!

Application composition is a very easy task, and it is supported by low-code / no-code designers and simplified SDKs.

So, we have just demonstrated how IoT Catalyst Studio is a “de facto” composable technology, enabling the creation of composable IoT edge applications.

How easily these edge applications can be composed with core services that are part of the IT ecosystem of an organization?

It is often very useful, if not mandatory, to connect edge applications to multiple external systems that run at the core to achieve specific business goals. An example is the case of an IoT driver installed at the edge to interface machinery. The IoT driver will exchange some data with a SCADA system and to an MES to calculate OEE. The same IoT driver, in case of fault, should send an instant alert to request immediate maintenance.

 The above example demonstrates that the chosen IoT technology and resulting IoT architecture should make it possible to connect edge applications to one or more external applications that run at the core of the IT/OT ecosystem.

The question is

How it is possible to perform such edge-to-core integrations preserving the paradigm of composable architecture?

IoT Catalyst Studio Adapters to the rescue!

IoT Catalyst Studio is the only edge platform that creates IoT edge applications that can connect in real-time to one or more external applications with no break in service. 

Integration with external systems and platforms is thus possible thanks to the IoT Catalyst Studio Adapter technology.

IoT Catalyst Studio Adapters enable the direct, real-time connection of running edge applications to one or more external core applications with no break in service.  

Edge applications and central systems are always connected directly, with no intermediaries, no need for modifications, and secured by a security policy endorsed by design.

Using IoT Catalyst Studio is thus possible to perform device onboarding and activate bidirectional communication with any external system (e.g., Azure IoT, AWS IoT, SCADA system, Etc.) without being an expert and without modifying the original code!

Conclusions

IoT Catalyst Studio is the perfect tool for CIOs and CTO that want to create composable architecture, abandoning the data-driven approach for the future-proof model-driven design.

A composable architecture at the very end means freedom from lock-ins, and it is the only way to adapt faster and more effectively your business to changes.