Accelerating IoT Solution Development with Advantech's Ready‑to‑Use Platforms

Arturo Lotito, director of IoT Business Development and Orchestrator at Advantech, highlights that the Internet of Things (IoT) connects every device or asset—whether in offices, factories, supply chains, or in the hands of customers—unlocking vast opportunities. Realizing these benefits, however, demands new operational approaches, business models, and strategies, and now multi‑disciplinary expertise is available through cost‑effective, ready‑to‑use packages.

IoT Opportunities and Challenges

The IoT equips businesses to transform operations at every level and deepen ties with suppliers and customers. While the advantages are clear, achieving them requires a blend of engineering, technical knowledge, and rigorous testing—competencies that many small firms lack when pursuing digital transformation alone.

Servitisation—shifting from a product‑centric model to a service‑oriented one—illustrates how IoT can strengthen customer relationships, add value, and boost revenue. For example, a facilities manager at a city authority or hospital group might purchase LED lighting not as a product but as a service, including maintenance and disposal. This saves capital expenditure and frees in‑house teams, while suppliers gain recurring revenue and market share.

In the traditional model, customer engagement typically ends once the packing slip is printed and the goods shipped. IoT enables suppliers to stay connected permanently, automatically capturing data needed to manage the service continuously. It also provides a robust mechanism for ensuring fielded equipment is handled correctly at the end of its life, reducing environmental impact and regulatory penalties.

While IoT drives servitisation, it also pushes traditional equipment suppliers toward more complex business models that demand advanced technologies, sophisticated service operations, and strategic management. This added complexity introduces new risks: companies that excel at product development may lack the skills to build and deliver saleable services, leading to longer time‑to‑revenue and cash‑flow challenges.

Partnering with Domain Experts

An effective strategy is to identify partners that provide the missing competencies needed to create a complete, market‑ready service. These competencies can include app development or software IP (pre‑installed or cloud‑based), specific hardware components, high‑level configuration for niche markets, or proven approaches for engaging key decision‑makers in customer organisations.

Cross‑domain partnerships are essential for traditional product firms transitioning to servitisation. Selecting the right partners, however, is critical, time‑consuming, and fraught with risk.

To address these challenges and accelerate time to market, Advantech has elevated partnering principles by launching IoT Solution‑Ready Platforms (SRPs). Co‑created with selected partners, fully tested, and productised, SRPs enable system integrators to rapidly build reliable solutions that leverage Advantech and partner technologies and expertise.

More than 30 SRPs currently cover opportunities such as electric‑vehicle charging, smart parking, intelligent healthcare, and smart‑factory/Industry 4.0 solutions—including vibration monitoring and remote O&M. Table 1 highlights a few examples.

Table 1. Advantech SRPs support a wide range of opportunities in diverse IoT‑services markets.

Solution‑Ready Package

Take the Electric Vehicle Charging Management System (EVCMS) SRP as an example. The package delivers a complete cloud‑based service featuring a centralised dashboard for charging‑station operators, a mobile app for vehicle owners to monitor charging status and billing, and an Arm Mbed Cloud portal for capturing charging data and managing communication gateways.

The dashboard and mobile app, co‑created by XMight, handle contract capacity optimisation, intelligent charge scheduling, billing and payments, and equipment monitoring—critical components of a field‑ready service that demand specialist knowledge and market experience. Edge services, machine learning, and database support are also integrated, as illustrated in figure 1.

Industrial IoT (IIoT) services face unique challenges: diverse equipment‑data formats and standards, edge device management, wireless communication, and data analysis. Additional hurdles include integrating AI models with expert knowledge, delivering visually intuitive cloud reports, ensuring compliance with data‑handling regulations, and meeting customers’ expectations for trustworthy platforms and robust security.

Advantech’s industrial SRPs embed solutions to these challenges. The Equipment Vibration Monitoring Solution, co‑created with AnCAD and other partners, offers a vibration‑visualisation dashboard and monitoring tools that help customers optimise maintenance costs and pre‑empt costly downtime.

AnCAD’s edge intelligence tackles complex signal pre‑processing and time/frequency‑domain analysis, enabling other SRP apps to perform dynamic balance monitoring, equipment management, thresholding, and alarm generation.

Managing Change for Maximum Success

Servitisation is just one of many transformative opportunities IoT presents. Organisations that adapt quickly—and manage change effectively—will thrive. Advantech’s co‑creative approach instantly supplies domain expertise, enabling the creation of secure, reliable, best‑in‑class IoT solutions.

The author of this blog is Arturo Lotito, director of IoT Business Development and Orchestrator at Advantech.