How a specialty printer company built a smart connected product ecosystem for monetizing goods
With a decade of experience in end-to-end IoT solutions and IoT services, read how Thinxtream® used AWS®, Android™ and iOS®, Fosdick Fulfillment and Salesforce® to develop a custom business solution.
The business goal
Monetization of products is one of the major challenges of niche consumer device companies, like our customer, who manufactured specialty printers with custom digital content and consumables.
With tight budgets and thin product margins, traditional, physical, retail distribution strategies were not feasible. Working with Thinxtream, an experienced end-to-end IoT solutions partner, enabled the customer to develop and integrate a smart connected product solution for consumers with an ecosystem comprising cloud, mobile and electronic stores. It enabled them to expand their market reach, address a wide user base and provided a significant source of post-sale revenues.
Top IoT challenges
- Dynamic scaling to support seasonal usage cycles
- Balancing device performance and target cost
- Hardware compatibility with Android
- Secure connectivity between device and cloud
- Consistent performance and usability across device, web and mobile
- Device certification from Apple®
Key highlights
- Smartphone-like device interface
- Consistent UI across device, mobile apps, app store and website
- Evolving cloud platform with storefront and digital content repository
- In-app billing for purchase of digital content
- Integration with external logistics service partner
- OTA upgrade to the device
The IoT solution
Thinxtream built a cloud-based ecosystem integrating the specialty printer device with digital storefronts, mobile apps, fulfillment services and CRM:
- Cloud platform: AWS®
- Cloud services: Amazon Route 53®, AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk®, Amazon S3®, TVM
- Cloud data services: Amazon RDS®, Amazon SimpleDB®
- Enterprise integration: Fosdick Fulfillment, Salesforce® CRM
- UI: Native Android, Apple® Objective-C®, HTML, JavaScript™
- Programming: Drupal™ and PHP
- Client OS: Android™ and iOS®
The solution architecture used Elastic Beanstalk with an auto scaling group behind Route 53 and an elastic load balancer, connecting web clients and mobile apps to a token vending machine, S3 for digital content storage, SimpleDB for catalogue data, and a payment gateway service for in-app purchases.
The results
The specialty printer company leveraged Thinxtream's end-to-end IoT services to develop an innovative IoT solution that helped them launch a competitive smart connected product in the market and enable post-sale revenue streams.
Thinxtream's agile development methodologies ensured that the customer could experience developed features early, provide feedback on a regular basis, and assess project progress continuously.
Automation and continuous build techniques ensured accelerated development and testing, while protecting integrity.
Thinxtream's IoT solution architecture established the foundation for future implementations and innovation by the customer.
"Our customer leveraged our proven IoT solutions expertise across embedded, cloud and mobile technologies, all under one roof."— Teck-Lee Low, Executive Director, Thinxtream
