In this project, Technostacks client wanted to build and implement an innovative concept with IoT enabled remote monitoring solution. The client with this IoT solution concept wished to transform the face of beekeeping with a straightforward and pesticide-free approach. Using this IoT solution, they wanted to get rid of Varroa destructor mites in beehives and make the solution highly accessible to end-users through a simple to use application.

So, the client company needed to enable an innovative and game-changing technology, code-named “MiteNote,” which seeks to sterilize mites, thus removing them, however, also ensuring that the bees are not harmed with their approach.

The project involved a compostable circuit board that precisely applied heat right to the honeycomb cells by having a sense of the reproductive cycle of the bee broods. And further, sterilize mites by using a precise temperature range. Additionally, the board had sensors and heaters, facilitating the temperature patterns in each of its thirty-two zones. Identifying a specific design and practice, the solution turned on the heating in the picky zone for a definite period of time, which killed the mites that used to kill the bees.

The client wanted an application that can facilitate users to get better visibility into the circuit metrics and make temperature changes utilizing the iOS app. Here, the critical focus had to be on the application’s user-friendliness as most of the involved users would not be technology savvy. The UI and UX had to assist users in optimizing the application features and functionality in a trouble-free manner.

Technostacks development teams enabled the “MiteNote” circuit board to interface with the application over Bluetooth. Once the Bluetooth connection was made active, the application needed to scan the board to showcase and display the metrics. The development and design team had to collaboratively build a display with 32 elements (boxes) on it, with every box showing the related temperature.

Creating an app reading values from every sensor on the circuit board and showcasing it, with the change in the color on the boxes based on the temperature, was not a big challenge for the Technostacks team. Further, the app required functionality where the user could click on the heater component to increase or decrease the temperature and decide the time duration of the temperature changes. The scope also included creating software that constantly logs the temperature patterns to keep the user informed about the diverse variations.

The Technostacks team enabled all the essential requirements and further built an integrated Core Bluetooth Framework for scanning, connecting, reading, and writing the MiteNote circuit board through the application. This requirement facilitated the user to search for BLE devices, pick MiteNote, and connect to the board.

Other functionalities included wherein the app could display temperature values right from the MiteNote circuit and facilitated that the temperature was displayed in diverse colors. The mobile app development team at Technostacks built an integrated solution utilizing Objective C that catered to all client needs and turned the app easy to use. They further used iOS technologies to make the application iPad compatible. A step further, Technostacks developers even crafted a functionality wherein users can set-up temperatures for MiteNote boards right from the application.

“Our teams brought in the right functionalities with needed app features in swift time,” said Hansal Shah, Managing Director of Technostacks.

Technostacks team delivered an extensive series of features and functionalities to enable the app users and the client to use the company’s specialization in IoT software development and IoT hardware firmware development to successfully enable and launch the IoT based Remote Monitoring Solution.

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The Data Union, a framework that allows IoT app developers to offer new data monetization opportunities to users, moves today from public beta to full launch.

By integrating the framework, app developers can empower their users to monetize the real-time information they create every day online using IoT, smart or connected devices.

Interested developers can also apply for seed funding from Streamr to create Data Union projects to help individuals take back more control of the data they create online.

By joining a Data Union, such as Swash, individuals can actually earn money as they browse the web. Streamr’s concept is designed to decentralize control of our information away from a few giant corporations.

The data is sent to a stream on the Streamr Network, and access to the pooled data is sold as a product on the Streamr Marketplace. Any revenue from the data product is automatically shared among the Data Union members and distributed as DATA, an ERC-20 Ethereum token.

Henri Pihkala, Streamr’s founder and CEO said: “We’re very excited about the potential of Data Unions and can’t wait to hear from developers who have ambitions to create their own. Democratizing the value of our data like this helps to decentralize the monopoly of a few giant corporations, putting control back in the hands of the individual user.”

To celebrate the launch Streamr is holding the ‘Data Challenge’ hackathon across India, starting later this month, in partnership with Lumos Labs. The 16-week challenge will see hundreds of developers from the subcontinent compete to build innovative apps around the Data Union technology.

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The collaboration enables customers to monitor their EHS performance, receive early warnings about issues from their Honeywell equipment, and take proactive steps to help prevent incidents and improve safety compliance.

“With companies concerned about making a safe return to their facilities, we are offering a solution that aims to provide peace of mind to management in terms of both safety and compliance to keep up with ever-changing health and environmental regulations,” said John Rudolph, president, Honeywell Process Solutions. “Our new reality requires innovative solutions that enable both business continuity and help protect the health of their employees.”

Given the heightened uncertainty of today’s business environment, companies have an urgent need for a more holistic, integrated, enterprise platform to operationalize real-time data collected from human and machine input. By leveraging this data, companies can use actionable intelligence through the integration of technologies to mitigate safety risk and remain compliant with regulations.

Scenario – How it could work in today’s environment:

• Before visiting the facility, Honeywell’s Digitized Workforce Management software provides an electronic questionnaire which, when complete, provides an access code and time of arrival to reduce the need for transfer of paper documents and improve social distancing.
• At the entryway, the connected safety software solutions allow Honeywell’s artificial intelligence-driven elevated body temperature monitoring solutions to conduct non-invasive, preliminary screenings of personnel entering a facility.
• The system also detects if individuals are wearing the required personal protective equipment needed for entering the building and if they are doing so properly, in compliance with safety regulations.
• These data points and other manual data points are then reported to the Enablon EHS software.
  Through a dashboard view, management can monitor workers to ensure that they remain compliant with rapidly changing health and safety regulations. The EHS solution also allows frontline operations employees to carry out measurements, checks and recordings directly in the field, without the need to walk back and forth to a control room.
• By combining Honeywell’s connected safety portfolio and with Enablon’s software suite, customers can eliminate errors in recorded data and improve hands-on-tool time for operators.

“Our goal is to help predict and prevent accidents and out-of-compliance events before they happen,” said Chirag Shah, senior director, Product Management at Wolters Kluwer’s Enablon business. “To do this, companies need to act on data that comes directly from equipment and assets as well as data from workers and contractors in the field. Combining real-time human and machine data in an integrated solution will enable our joint customers to achieve the benefits of a digitized operation. By joining forces with Honeywell, we are helping our customers leverage the benefits of a true Industry 4.0 solution.”

Besides monitoring the health and safety of employees, the solution can also deliver environmental benefits. Today, industries must comply with environmental permits containing hundreds of specific requirements. The technology can monitor, control and report back on the health of these controls. Honeywell’s stationary and mobile solutions can be configured directly from the local environmental and regulatory permit conditions within local jurisdictions, providing early warning alerts to prevent non-compliance.

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Our Michigan based IoT software development company, SpinDance, and Edge Impulse, the leading provider of embedded machine learning technology, have recently partnered to allow for the simplification of embedding machine learning technologies into existing smart devices and newly manufactured IoT products.

The partnership makes us the first Edge Impulse Solution Partner in the United States using the Edge Impulse platform to create and optimize machine learning models specifically for running on edge devices. Using the platform provides our experienced engineering team additional tools to bring machine learning to reality for our clients with positive impacts on the bottom line. We believe that combining this technology with SpinDance’s holistic, full-stack approach that has been part of our practice in software development for over twenty years will create powerful new opportunities for our clients.

Applications for Machine Learning in IoT
Use cases span a variety of industries, products, and applications. Advances are rapidly being made in areas such as agricultural, consumer, medical, and industrial spaces. One of the reasons for this is the ability of IoT devices to process sensor data like vibration, audio, vision, temperature, humidity, etc. in real-time to provide insights where and when they are needed.

In many cases today, IoT devices will collect the data, send it to the cloud, make machine learning inferences in the cloud, and then send the data back to the device. While this may be the right solution in some cases, it can be prohibitively slow, unreliable, costly, and/or present security concerns. The power of embedded machine learning is that it enables us to have the model run on the device which eliminates many of these obstacles. It minimizes battery consumption by massively reducing data communication needs and enables completely new applications for devices on low-bandwidth networks such as LPWAN or satellite. It can save costs on data transfers to the cloud and the power usage related to making these transfers. Depending on network latency and infrastructure design, we have seen latency reduced from a 1-second round-trip on inference to under 50ms. This can be a complete game-changer in time-critical applications. Also, distributing this processing load across devices in the field can save thousands of dollars in cloud computing and transfer costs. In the IoT space, data security is always something we need to be very cognizant of. If we can keep sensitive data on the device rather than sending it out, we reduce the security risks that inherently come with multiple network data transfers.

One simple example of the power of audio data and machine learning is with appliances. When the human brain hears unique sounds coming from an appliance it can promptly detect an issue, like a bearing going bad, a motor that is struggling, something out of balance, or a filter being clogged.

During a hot summer, my family enjoys the relief that a window air conditioner unit brings to our home. Living around a lot of trees means that debris can easily clog the drain in a window unit causing water to back up and spray around inside the unit. One day while sitting at my dinner table I heard a noise from the air conditioner – the likely sound of a clogged drain hole. Fortunately, I was home to unclog it and forgo possible damage to the unit. If I wasn’t home, wouldn’t it be better if the appliance was smart enough to know to shut off or at least notify me that there is a problem? This situation could be addressed with a water sensor, however, those come with their problems such as dealing with rain outside. I decided to test a theory that Edge Impulse could enable creating a solution for a smart air conditioner just using audio. Using Edge Impulses data collection API, I quickly built a small data set of three air conditioner states: Off, Normal, and Clogged. Within an hour, I had a model trained that was able to detect these differences with 95.5% accuracy. Without the platform, this model would’ve taken me several days to build.

I find that Edge Impulse reduces the time developers spend on the busy work of machine learning and allows them to focus their time on adding greater value to the project.

Streamlining Development for Better Business Outcomes
Advances in AI and machine learning technologies give companies the ability to gather, analyze, and leverage data to utilize for business advantages. This data can have impactful business outcomes including enhanced customer experiences. When coupled with streamlined IoT development in connected devices the potential to increase revenue can be significant.

Want to explore how to embed machine learning into your connected device(s)? Contact SpinDance for a technical discovery session.

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Braze, the comprehensive customer engagement platform, today announced it has established a joint venture with Japan Cloud, the leading market entry platform that helps prominent global businesses, such as BlackLine, Marketo, New Relic, and others succeed in the Japanese market. Japanese companies will now be able to leverage Braze’s market-leading technology and Japan Cloud’s local go-to-market expertise to build direct relationships with consumers in a meaningful way.

“Braze believes brands can transform their businesses with a mobile-first customer engagement strategy, which aligns with the Japanese market that has always been one of the early adopters of mobile,” said Bill Magnuson, Cofounder and CEO of Braze. “As we continue our expansion in Asia, we chose to partner with Japan Cloud for their go-to-market expertise and access to top talent and networks in Japan. We are looking forward to helping Japanese customers power relevant and memorable experiences between consumers and the brands they love.”

“Marketing technology has been ripe for disruption in the Japanese market as many platforms are antiquated and built for an email-centric experience,” said Aruna Basnayake, CEO of Japan Cloud. “We are excited to work with Braze as we bring their leading customer engagement platform to the second largest enterprise software market in the world and to work with Japanese brands to grow new and existing customer relationships, resulting in increased ROI and brand loyalty.”

The expansion comes as a result of increased demand for Braze in the Asia-Pacific region over the past 12 months. Braze currently has more than 900 customers in 50 countries, including Burger King, HBO, Mercari, and Uniqlo USA. The company’s customers encompass a network of more than 2.5 billion monthly active users and an average of 1.5 billion daily messages across retail and ecommerce, media and entertainment, financial services, and more.

“Our partnership with Braze has allowed us to expand among the U.S. and helped us position ourselves for more growth globally,” said Sho Masuda, VP of Growth Marketing, Mercari, Inc. “As we expanded our use of their platform to include Japan, the Braze team has continuously provided a delightful, meaningful, and authentic experience for our customers.”

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Voxbone has been majority-owned by Vitruvian Partners, a leading growth- and technology-focused investment firm headquartered in London, UK, since 2015. Voxbone is a leading European-based communications platform and IP voice network. Since 2005, their mission has been to simplify global communications for businesses by providing compliant, quality coverage that can be integrated with any contact center, conferencing platform or voice application.

“We are bringing together leading domestic and international enterprise cloud communications platforms to supercharge global cloud communications for our customers. Bandwidth’s deep US presence and Voxbone’s world-wide platform across 60+ countries will serve enterprises in countries representing 93% of global GDP. Today’s announcement accelerates our international strategy by several years. Our current and future customers will benefit from using a unified software platform, network and team to serve people around the world,” said David Morken, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Bandwidth. “Voxbone’s platform is trusted by approximately 900 enterprises, including brands like Uber, Zoom, 8×8 and Skype. We’re thrilled to welcome this pioneering team to Bandwidth and congratulate them on their tremendous growth.”

Combination to Supercharge Cloud Communications:

Through this combination, Bandwidth will play an even greater role in leading the transformation of enterprise cloud communications, enabling companies around the world to develop, launch, and hyper-scale applications and customer experiences using rich voice and text.

Enterprises everywhere in 2020 are prioritizing voice, video, and text communications in their digital transformations. At the center of this challenge is a critical need for a single worldwide cloud communications platform and network. With the addition of Voxbone’s intuitive user experience, software platform and voice network spanning 60+ countries, Bandwidth will provide global enterprises with a unified answer to the question of how to develop and deliver communications applications and experiences around the world. This creates a tremendous opportunity for Bandwidth, as IDC projects worldwide spending on communications as a service to be $17.7 billion by 20241.

Upon close, Bandwidth will power 11 out of 12 of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Leaders for UCaaS, CCaaS, and Meeting Solutions enterprises.

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Quadrant Knowledge Solutions’ SPARK Matrix provides a snapshot of the key market participants and a visual representation of their positioning. It also provides strategic insights on the ranking of participating vendors in relation to their competitors along several axis, representing a range of performance parameters, coinciding with technology excellence and customer impact.

Driven by the impact of Covid-19, the global economy, along with the major industries, is facing significant challenges and a negative growth. Covid-19 has impacted the market for overall digital transformation and enterprise software, including enterprise architecture and innovation management. Despite the economic recession and associated negative impact on technology investments, the EA tools market is expected to continue with its growth momentum in 2020, and during the forecasted years of 2020-2025. Quadrant analysts believe that from the year 2021 onwards, the technology investments will see an upward trend again, driven mainly by the pent-up demand in addition to eventual economic recovery of the key markets across the geographical regions.

According to Quadrant Knowledge Solutions analysis, “LeanIX has scored strong overall ratings across the performance parameters of technology excellence and customer impact for the global Enterprise Architecture Tools market. LeanIX has emerged as the technology leader in the 2020 SPARK Matrix of the EA tools market.”

According to Divya Baranawal, Research Director at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions, “LeanIX’s comprehensive functional capabilities backed by the flexible data model, multi-modal database, open APIs, and collaborative workflow capabilities, is well positioned to support enterprises in transforming their strategic planning, driving innovations and continuous improvements, in addition to improving their overall competitiveness. With a continued focus on improving product usability, advanced analytics and reporting capability, apart from effective execution of its market growth strategy, LeanIX is expected to increase its market share in the global EA tools market.”

“We are pleased to be named as a 2020 leader in the Spark Matrix Enterprise Architecture Tools market research,” said André Christ, CEO and Co-founder, LeanIX. “Our LeanIX Enterprise Architecture Suite continues to provide value to CIOs and enterprise architects as they look for ways to simplify the management of their IT landscape with an intuitive tool that enables them to make actionable decisions based on data.”

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Qualys announced it is expanding into China through the establishment of a Private Cloud Platform and a partnership with Digital China, the largest value-added provider of integrated IT products, solutions and support for enterprises in China.

Digital China will manage and support the Qualys Private Cloud Platform from China and distribute and resell Qualys’ leading cloud-based IT, security and compliance solutions. This partnership enables customers in China to leverage the power of the Qualys Cloud Platform to integrate apps like Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response (VMDR®), Multi-Vector EDR, and the upcoming Security Analytics and Incident Response solution all in a single Qualys Cloud console. This native, cloud-based platform, which can be delivered as a private cloud, uniquely allows customers to discover, assess, prioritize, patch or mitigate any critical vulnerabilities that make their way to the client IT environment. It also provides real-time assessment of devices that connect to the network, malware identification and endpoint protection on a global scale.

“We are pleased to represent Qualys and to offer our customers access to their industry-leading solutions,” said Jing Li, vice president, Digital China. “Qualys’ all-in-one, cloud-based apps will help our customers, especially those engaged in digital transformation projects for hybrid and cloud environments, significantly accelerate their ability to respond to threats and prevent breaches.”

“Digital China is a premier integrated IT service provider that helps customers accelerate essential Digital Transformation efforts. They streamline customers’ existing enterprise security and compliance point solutions stack, so they can effectively secure their hybrid environment with an approach that scales, increase much-needed visibility and respond to threats before hackers create irreparable damage,” said Philippe Courtot, chairman and CEO of Qualys. “This partnership enables us to increase our global footprint and enables Digital China to offer customers a consolidated approach that brings the power of the Qualys Cloud Platform to China.”

Qualys VMDR, Multi-Vector EDR and upcoming Next-Gen Analytics and Incidence Response
Qualys VMDR provides an all-in-one cloud-based app that automates the entire vulnerability management cycle across on-premises, endpoints, cloud, mobile, containers, OT, and IoT environments – significantly accelerating the ability of organizations to respond to threats and prevent breaches. Qualys offers an endpoint detection and response solution for clients looking to recognize suspicious patterns and uncover hidden incidents. Qualys Multi-Vector EDR provides vital context and comprehensive visibility to the entire attack chain, from prevention to detection to response – all from a single solution.

Additionally, Qualys plans to launch a Next-Gen Security Analytics and Incident Response product line that natively integrates and correlates security telemetry across the security stack. The solution will integrate Qualys and third-party products such as O365, AWS CloudTrail, SecurityHub, Zoom, Salesforce, Firewalls, IPS/IDS, Proxy, VPNs, AVs, etc. into a cohesive security incident and response platform. It includes native support for User and Asset Behavior Profiling and Analytics (UEBA), threat hunting, intelligence, and automated response with out-of-the-box support for MITRE ATT&CK detection use cases.

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A new report from Invoca, “High-Stakes Purchases and Consumer Confidence in the COVID Era,” highlights data from a survey of 500 U.S. adults to understand specifically how consumers are approaching expensive and complex purchases in this new environment. The data uncovers important findings for businesses aiming to give consumers confidence in making these complicated purchases online.

Despite the economic downturn brought on by COVID, Invoca’s report finds people are still making high-stakes purchases, such as cars, insurance policies, wireless plans, and big-ticket home improvement items. However, they’re changing the way they research and buy these items, in many cases moving entirely online. For example, the survey found online purchases in automotive grew 115% since March and increased 85% in home services. That said, consumers have important concerns when shopping online: People are most concerned that they won’t be able to verify the product or service quality before purchasing (36%), that they’ll choose the wrong product or service (22%), that refunds will be complicated (21%) and that they won’t get the best deal (19%).

Given the level of cost and complexity these types of purchases require, the report uncovered how brands can help consumers feel more confident when it comes to making these purchases online.

Brands must create a smooth online experience with options to get live help: For consumers making complex purchases online, it’s just as important to provide them with an option to get live, expert sales assistance as it is to have a fully functional website across devices. 81% of consumers said that just having a phone number displayed online so they know they can quickly call a representative, should they have questions, made them feel more confident in their purchases. 80% said having a website that is fully functional across devices made them feel confident.

Brands must move quickly to provide the info consumers need — or risk losing them: 30% of consumers said that when a website feels outdated, they will choose a different brand, while 32% will do so when the website does not load quickly or freezes often. 33% of consumers will ditch the brand if the website does not make it easy to find product or pricing info.

Brands must be ready to answer the call: 87% said talking to a person on the phone to answer questions made them feel more confident in making these complex purchases online. When customers are dissatisfied with a website that otherwise offers what they’re looking for, 48% are very likely or likely to call the business.

“Almost half of people told us that, even when businesses open up fully, they plan to continue making these high-stakes purchases online. Brands should not simply transfer their operations online; they need to have their digital long game figured out,” said Dee Anna McPherson, CMO of Invoca. “They should provide online shoppers easy access to expert assistance via phone or live chat; enable customer service agents to deliver a positive experience; and use insights from these conversations with online shoppers to improve the digital experience.”

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Pure has released a series of enhancements to its hybrid cloud solutions across the VMware portfolio. These additions allow Pure to accelerate hybrid cloud deployments as a VMware Design Partner on key technologies.

This includes vSphere Virtual Volumes with VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware Site Recovery Manager, Cloud Native Storage for Kubernetes on VMware, and NVMe over Fabric.

New solution enhancements from Pure are designed to help enterprises maximise their VMware investments, delivering agility and efficiency for modern applications across on-premises and cloud environments, the company states.

In addition, customers will have improved availability of their data services, enabling them to meet demanding Service-level Agreements (SLAs).

Solutions designed to accelerate hybrid cloud deployments and optimise customers’ VMware investments include the following:

vSphere Virtual Volumes as principal storage for VMware Cloud Foundation

VMware and Pure enable vSphere Virtual Volumes as Principal storage for VMware Cloud Foundation. According to the company, this enables customers to realise the value of Pure Storage and vSphere Virtual Volumes natively within VMware Cloud Foundation.

FlashStack delivers the performance, availability, and economics required for a VMware Cloud Foundation hybrid cloud in a single architecture, with the simplicity of integrated application to infrastructure management.

Support for vSphere Virtual Volumes storage with Site Recovery Manager

Modern data protection is a critical component for any VMware deployment including those leveraging vSphere Virtual Volumes on Pure, the company states.

For VMware infrastructure, VMware Site Recovery Manager provides an enterprise solution for automated disaster recovery.

Pure co-engineered the integration of vSphere Virtual Volumes with SRM. This allows enterprises to consume vSphere Virtual Volumes on Pure while protecting their mission critical applications from disaster.

VMware Tanzu and container integration

Pure is a VMware Design Partner for the Cloud Native Storage and vSphere Virtual Volumes programs, providing persistent storage that enables true hybrid cloud mobility for containers running on VMware.

Cloud Native Storage and vSphere Virtual Volumes enable workloads in Kubernetes environments to utilise Pure FlashArray as CSI-compliant persistent storage, bringing world-class all-flash performance and data services to containerised applications in addition to VMware vSphere environments.

NVMe-oF with vSphere 7

Pure is VMware’s Design Partner for modern data fabric support on vSphere. With vSphere 7, VMware and Pure have worked to provide native end-to-end support for NVMe over Fabrics (NVME-oF) using Pure’s DirectFlash Fabric.

This capability allows the raw performance of the Pure FlashArray and maximises performance density in the data centre, according to the company. Mutual customers have access to a modern data experience that maximises the performance and consolidation of critical applications, VMs, and containers, Pure states.

Pure Storage vice president Technology Alliance Partners Vaughn Stewart says, “More than ever, enterprises need to maximise their technology investments to bring simplicity to their cloud operations and infrastructure.

“By providing automated data services to applications in virtual machines and containers, Pure helps customers gain a modern data experience with their VMware hybrid clouds.”

VMware vice president marketing Cloud Platform Business Unit, Lee Caswell, says, “Pure is an important design partner for VMware.

“Our mutual customers benefit from how we simplify the deployment of all-flash storage in VMware Cloud Foundation, while Pure’s role in VMware Virtual Volumes (vVols) simplifies the management of modern software-defined data centres.

“We look forward to delivering NVMoF solutions to market that will reset the bar on performance for modern applications.”

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