How a printer OEM monetised supplies and spare parts from vast enterprise install base
With a decade of experience in end-to-end IoT solutions and IoT services, read how Thinxtream® used AWS®, Cassandra®, MuleSoft®, Talend™, Android™ and iOS® to build a device management solution for printers and scanners.
The business goal
In the low-end, price-competitive printer market which the OEM customer addressed, margins are thin. Remote services, self-help and supplies replenishment were avenues for profitable, recurring revenues.
When there are thousands of small enterprise deployments, having a stable, scalable and accurate, centrally-managed device management system became key for the business. Working with Thinxtream, an experienced end-to-end IoT solutions partner, enabled the customer to develop and integrate low-end networked printers into an IoT solution ecosystem comprising cloud, mobile and field gateways that helped the OEM to keep an accurate account of the health of deployments and their supply-demand forecast.
Top IoT challenges
- Scale to millions of printers
- Simple setup for users
- Real-time status monitoring
- Consistent performance and usability across device, web and mobile
- Device certification from Apple® and Microsoft®
- Testing for scale
- Edge computing on small footprint hardware for field gateway
- Secure cloud connectivity to document hubs for scan and print
Key highlights
- Out-of-the-box setup experience for users
- Access to printers from anywhere via mobile phone
- Instant health alert
- Accurate tracking of supplies
- Print from and scan to popular cloud storage providers
- Customizable document workflows
- Driverless printing and scanning
- Demand forecast reports from backend
- Dynamic scale up and down to meet demand cycles
- OTA upgrade for field gateways
The IoT solution
Thinxtream built a proprietary IoT platform-based device management solution integrating field gateways, cloud services, mobile apps and enterprise reporting:
- IoT platform: Proprietary IoT platform
- Cloud services: AWS®, AWS Auto Scaling, AWS CloudFormation®, AWS ELB, Amazon CloudFront®, Amazon CloudWatch®, Amazon EC2®, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk®, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Route 53®, Amazon S3®
- Cloud data services: Cassandra®, MySQL™, PostgreSQL®
- UI: Native Android, Apple® Objective-C®, HTML5, JavaScript™
- Programming: Java®, Embedded C, TR069, OAuth
- Client OS: Android™, iOS®
- Others: Mule® Flow, Talend™ Jobs, JasperReports®, cloud storage — Dropbox™, OneDrive®, Google Drive™
The architecture featured a Cassandra cluster with primary and backup regions for high availability, DeviceMaestro smart message handler and web services built on Elastic Beanstalk, a Mule ESB for enterprise integration, a notification engine using OpenMQ, and a DeviceMaestro smart field gateway for edge computing. CloudFront served static content globally, and Route 53 handled DNS routing.
The Results
The printer OEM leveraged Thinxtream's IoT services to develop an innovative cloud-based IoT solution which unlocked new revenue channels by offering remote service and supplies replenishment. The solution generated rich data that became the basis for reporting and analysis.
Value-added workflows such as mobile access to print/scan functionality, easy access to a cloud-based document store, driverless printing and self-help for issues brought the printers closer to users.
By designing well-defined interfaces, loose coupling between modules, and customizable workflows, the IoT solution could be adapted to new technologies, processes and requirements.
"By using an IoT platform on AWS®, we created a scalable device management solution for printers."— Teck-Lee Low, Executive Director, Thinxtream
