Platform and applications

Everything below this point is specific to some technology. Everything above it is not. That is the whole trick, and it is why the platform layer decides how far a digitalization programme can go.

The platform layer

The horizontal platform administers the devices and normalizes, stores, processes and forwards their data. It also sends data back, to drive an actuator.

Its responsibilities:

• Device administration, including organizations, permissions, rules, monitoring and alarms.
• Breadth of device support across connectivity types, and the ability to add new device types quickly as they appear.
• Normalization into one agreed data model, which is what makes everything above it possible.
• Separation of instances, logical or physical, for applications or organizations that require it.
• Edge computing for faster response and resilience, and connection of AI applications.
• Deployment flexibility across cloud, edge and hybrid.

This is what Yggio is. Devices arrive from any of the technologies in this guide and become the same kind of device, with the same fields, the same access rights and the same history. A rule written today keeps working when next year's sensor replaces this year's, because the rule was never written against the sensor. Start with one device, or bring in a thousand in a batch; the platform does not change shape.

See System Overview for how it is built.

The application layer

This is where the value is finally collected, and where the work of every layer below it pays off.

• Visualization and analysis in Grafana, Power BI or your own dashboards.
• Integration with business systems such as ERP or CMMS, which can lead to automated action such as raising a work order.
• Public services, for example a web site showing water temperature at a beach or free parking spaces.
• Automation from rules or AI analysis, adjusting lighting or ventilation, or prompting maintenance.
• Notification by push message, SMS or email when something needs attention.

What this makes possible

The ambition is worth stating plainly, because it is reachable. A building that reports its own faults. A city that reroutes traffic around an obstruction before anyone phones it in. A water network that finds the leak while it is still small. None of that needs new physics. It needs sensors that already exist, connected over networks that already exist, normalized into data that anyone can build on.

That last step is the one that decides whether a project becomes a pilot or a platform.

Where to go next

• System Overview for how Yggio implements the platform layer.
• Connectors for connecting a specific network or system.
• Translators for how device payloads are decoded and normalized.
• Training material to put it into practice.