WSO2 debuted its WSO2 IoT Server to help lower the barriers to capitalizing on IoT and mobile advantages. The open source WSO2 IoT Server is a complete solution that enables device manufacturers and enterprises to connect and manage their devices, build apps, manage events, secure devices and data, and visualize sensor data in a scalable manner.
It also offers a complete and secure enterprise mobility management (EMM/MDM) solution that aims to address mobile computing challenges faced by enterprises. Supporting iOS, Android, and Windows devices, it helps organizations deal with both corporate owned, personally enabled (COPE) and employee-owned devices with the bring your own device (BYOD) concept.
WSO2 IoT Server comes with advanced analytics, enabling users to analyze speed, proximity and geo-fencing information of devices including details of those in motion and stationary state.
The Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile computing are at the heart of many organizations’ digital transformation initiatives. Together, these technologies are enabling enterprises to innovate new business models and solutions that enhance customer and partner interactions, optimize supply chain logistics, and improve operational efficiency.
WSO2 IoT Server lets organizations focus on adding business value while speeding time to market by providing the features needed to start building an enterprise-grade solution—based on IoT, mobile or both—in one downloadable pack. It combines proven technology from WSO2 middleware already used in production IoT and mobile deployments with new, highly extensible device management functionality.
Additionally, the comprehensive product exposes devices as APIs to support integration and application development, ensures secure device and app access through identity management and authorization, simplifies app management for IT teams and end-users, and taps insights from devices via analytics and visualizations.
“Enterprises worldwide are harnessing mobile computing and the Internet of Things to revolutionize their business models. And increasingly these technologies are working hand-in-hand as mobile phones and tablets become command centers for controlling IoT-enabled lights, autos, retail kiosks, manufacturing systems, and more,” said Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, WSO2 founder, CEO and chief architect. “With the launch of our comprehensive, open source WSO2 IoT Server, we are empowering these organizations to speed their pace of innovation by delivering all the functionality needed to manage, integrate, secure and analyze IoT and mobile devices and applications.”
WSO2 IoT Server is designed to support the needs of product strategists and architects in device manufacturing companies that seek to enable innovative IoT-driven solutions—such as remote controlled locks, water quality controls, temperature and humidity monitors, medical equipment sensors, geo-location for smart cities, and IoT-enabled in-store retail and banking platforms, to name a few.
Line of business executives aiming to improve manufacturing operations and supply chain logistics, provide preventative maintenance, protect inventory via geo-fencing, and respond to travel conditions, among others.
Enterprise IT professionals and systems integrators delivering solutions to device manufacturers or business and governmental organizations that aim to speed time to market, maximize their deployment flexibility, and optimize their resources.
Enterprise IT professionals seeking to more easily and efficiently manage and protect employees’ mobile devices and applications. WSO2 has seen high demand for WSO2 IoT Server with an oversubscribed beta program that attracted more than 150 applicants seeking to take advantage of the product’s innovation. Notably among enterprises, there was a near-even split between organizations with existing IoT projects and those evaluating the potential of future IoT implementations.
WSO2 IoT Server offers a complete, secure, open source, enterprise-grade device management solution for both device manufacturers and enterprises that rely on IoT and mobile devices. The modular, customizable product provides server-side device management within a solution architecture.
WSO2 IoT Server is based on an open platform that can be extended to support any device type, protocols, and data formats. As a result, businesses can bring any device they want onto the server and define their own devices. Significantly, WSO2 IoT Server can manage other device platforms that accompany various devices. This lets enterprises gain a single point for device management and no longer need to manage five different devices from five different platforms.
The open source licensing of WSO2 IoT Server also encourages the community to contribute new device types that enrich the platform for everyone.
WSO2 IoT Server is built on the same framework that provides the core functionality for all WSO2 middleware products and handles billions of transactions per day at some customer sites. Additionally, the same cloud-enabled software can run on-premises, in a private cloud, or in a hybrid environment. Together, these capabilities support organizations’ demands for high scalability and deployment flexibility.
The highly extensible WSO2 IoT Server is built on the WSO2 Connected Device Management Framework (WSO2 CDMF), which provides the ability to manage any device. In its initial release, WSO2 IoT Server includes out-of-the-box support for mobile devices running Apple iOS or Microsoft Windows Mobile, as well as both mobile and IoT devices running Android, such as the Raspberry Pi and Arduino Uno microcontroller boards and 3D Robotics IRIS+ drone.
Using WSO2 IoT Server, authorized users can engage in self-service enrollment and the management of connected devices; group, manage and monitor connected devices; handle the distribution and management of applications and firmware to devices; and share device operations and data with others.
WSO2 IoT Server supports widely adopted protocols to enable device communications. These include the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP); WebSockets; Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP); and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), the lightweight messaging protocol often used for connecting IoT and mobile devices, as well as IoT sensors and gateways. Framework extensions allow users to add other protocols and data formats.
WSO2 IoT Server exposes devices as REST APIs to support users’ application development and integration efforts, including the ability to seamlessly integrate devices into existing solution architectures. API management in WSO2 IoT Server is based on the proven capabilities of WSO2 API Manager. Additionally, because WSO2 IoT Server is pre-integrated with all WSO2 middleware products, it can facilitate enterprise IoT projects.
WSO2 IoT Server delivers advanced, customizable analytics of device data through the real-time streaming analytics functionality of WSO2 Data Analytics Server (WSO2 DAS), including the ability to handle time-series data, time windows, moving averages, and temporal event patterns. It also offers support for predictive analytics via machine learning.
The small footprint and distributed architecture of WSO2 IoT Server’s analytics functionality enable analytics on edge-computing devices, as well as policy-based edge analytics. Moreover, this distributed architecture, combined with the ability of a single server instance to handle up to 100,000 events per second, means the analytics functionality can readily scale to the level required by IoT applications.
WSO2 IoT Server features pre-built graphs for instant visualization of sensor readings, such as temperature and velocity. Users can view statistics from live data streams gathered from individual or multiple devices, as well as traverse through, analyze, and zoom in and out of filtered data. Using the Stats-API in WSO2 IoT Server, users also can write their own visualizations.
WSO2 IoT Server identity and access management incorporates OAuth 2.0 token-based access control for devices and operations, protecting backend services by exposing device-type APIs. It also supports the Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) for the simple, scalable issuance of digital certificates for user authentication.
Building upon and replacing WSO2 Enterprise Mobility Manager 2.0, WSO2 IoT Server 3.0 is available today. It is delivered as a software download that can run directly on servers, on top of a private platform as a service (PaaS), or on top of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), such as Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2), Linux Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM), and VMware ESX.
Additionally, customers can choose to have WSO2 host the software through WSO2 Managed Cloud hosted services. As a fully open source solution released under the Apache License 2.0, WSO2 IoT Server does not carry any licensing fees.
WSO2 IoT Server is backed by a world-class technical team with in-depth knowledge of the middleware. In addition to production support, WSO2 service and support options include development support and special QuickStart consulting programs.
