SaaS platform development: 100% automation of digital devices with IoT-based web app

Innowise has forged a SaaS management platform to facilitate interaction and provide a convenient interface for managing IoT devices.

Customer

Industry

Region

Client since

2021

Our company partnered with an outsourcing vendor rendering solutions in custom software development, big data, embedded systems, real-time communications, AI, IoT, and many others since 2005. Detailed information about the client cannot be disclosed under the provisions of the NDA.

Challenge

To take full advantage of Web 4.0 technologies and SaaS app development, our customer wanted to build a turnkey IoT platform to manage the entire digital devices’ life cycles from registering to monitoring metrics. Rather than relying on off-the-shelf solutions with limited functionality and compatibility issues, the client sought out an out-of-the-box product that could interact with devices without human intervention.

As a result, our customer considered a web application with cloud architecture that allows adding new features and scaling on demand. Based on the client’s suggestions, Innowise carried out a SaaS platform development to manage IoT solutions regardless of their complexity and configuration.

Solution

Leveraging expertise in IoT technology, our vetted project team crafted a solution with the basic flow as follows.
At first, a company purchases a subscription to the application. Then, the administrator registers users or companies with a default set of permissions. New users can create roles to manage digital devices, aggregate them into groups, monitor metrics and manipulate their life cycles, and upgrade software if necessary.
In addition, our company added features to create MQTT topics (standard messaging protocol for the Internet of Things), visualize data dashboards, and make events/companies with appropriate system notifications with established roles and responsibilities.
As for the app’s structure, Innowise implemented microservice architecture with three main modules.

User and company service

We employed AWS Cognito as one of the best solutions for cloud migration since it offers built-in authentication/registration functions. Eliminating the need to develop an admin panel from scratch, we benefited from AWS compatibility with third-party services and external devices. Besides adding new members, our team expanded the admin panel’s capabilities to enable filtering, sorting, and creating entities (users and companies).

Facing the challenge of a high cybersecurity level, Innowise paid much attention to building safe app infrastructure. To do so, we set a system of permissions for users with different roles, providing access to program files within their responsibilities. The data encryption algorithm was also enhanced. To collect and save information about users, customers, devices, etc., our team approached advanced PostgresRLS technology.

Device service

As the core element of the app, this module serves as a wrapper over cloud services, allowing customers to register IoT devices, track their metrics, and make adjustments if any malfunctions occur. To ensure hassle-free performance with various cloud providers, we made our application compatible with AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Alternatively, if a customer wants the application on-premise, we can smoothly deploy it on the client’s side.

Data visualization

The application is integrated with the Grafana service to visualize information in the form of graphics and diagrams. To gain a better level of analytics, the admin can alter Grafana’s settings so that all the users will take full advantage of the tool. Data visualization uses both telemetry data from devices as well as metadata to represent information about gadgets’ performance and their metrics.

Moreover, with MQTT technology, all data can be recorded rapidly and stored in timestream cloud databases in an accessible way.

Technologies & tools

Back-end

Python3, Django, PostgreSQL, Redis, Celery, boto3, AWS-CLI, Pytest, Jenkins, Grafana

Front-end

JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML5, CSS3, React, Redux, React router, React charts, Material UI, WebSockets, Grafana

Cloud

AWS (IoT Core, RDS(PostgreSQL), Timestream, S3, Cognito, APIGateway, Lambda, ElasticCache, ECR, EKS, SNS, SES, MSK, KMS, IAM, CloudFront, CloudFormation, Route53, EC2), GCP(IoT Core, Cloud Storage, Cloud Firestore, Azure(IoT Hub, Blob Storage, Time Series Insights)

DevOps

Nginx, Jenkins, Docker, Docker-compose, Kubernetes

Git

BitBucket

Process

Our dedicated team passed through all the stages of the SDLC – from the discovery phase to deployment and post-launch maintenance.

As for the project methodology, the team used Scrum with daily meetings and intermediate reports. Task management and work time tracking was conducted through Jira, where the Team Lead revised the progress and assigned responsibilities. All the project documentation was stored in Confluence and Swagger.

Having started the project in July 2021, all set objectives have been achieved so far. Currently, the customer is searching for extra funding sources to enter new market niches.

As shown below, the solution’s architecture illustrates how the front-end and back-end interact.

Team

Back-End Developers

Front-End Developers

Team Lead

Software Architect

Business Analyst

Project Manager

DevOps Engineer

QA Engineer

Results

Our seasoned team has developed a top-notch SaaS platform to manage IoT devices from scratch. Innowise has presented a solution to manage digital devices and track their metrics that includes three modules:

User and company service to register new members/companies with the ability to add custom features;
Device service to monitor and correct the devices’ performance directly;
Data visualization to present all the information in the form of graphics/diagrams.

Since SaaS solutions require enhanced data protection to reduce the slightest risk of breach or leakage, the client benefited from a stable hierarchical module structure.

Consequently, our company developed an application to reduce the influence of human factors on the interaction between digital devices through a flexible cloud architecture that can be scaled up and customized as needed.

Project duration

July 2021 - in progress

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