IoT Services

Fermorite’s IoT department invests on the “Connected Future” vision to deliver cloud-based smart system solutions. On one hand, IoT essentially capitalizes on Fermorite’s expertise on distributed control systems and on the other hand it complements and builds upon, the company’s active business on cloud services and infrastructure. and IT services.

Fermorite’s IoT is primarily to be more of a service line of business rather than a manufacturing one. By establishing strategic partnerships with established manufacturers, any hardware development will, at least in the beginning, be limited to building only the required “bridging” products required for the integration solutions to be offered to the market. As far as the cloud is concerned, all products will be based and developed on Microsoft’s Azure suite of services.

Fermorite IoT solutions will be architectured to work in stand-alone mode but will inherently support, and be offered, with cloud connectivity in mind. In stand-alone mode, all components of a smart system interoperate based on predefined rules. However, Fermorite’s smart systems will be able to also upload all information on the cloud where further processing will take place. By storing large amounts of data in the cloud, it is possible to detect trends and patterns based on AI techniques that Fermorite will develop. Processed data will create new optimized work conditions which in turn will effectively optimize the target environment. This endless circle of constantly upgrading the intelligence of a smart system will effectively be a charged service.

Lighting control, blinds control, access control and environment (temperature, humidity, air quality) monitoring are some of the applications that fall directly into Fermorite’s IoT scope. Whilst the first three aforementioned aspects seem to now be quite mature, the latter one is of increasing interest world-wide. The consequences of atmospheric pollution are now getting a lot of attention as scientific evidence has indicated that indoor air pollution can be worse than outdoor pollutants in large and industrialized cities. The European Parliament is now looking at making amendments to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) taking into consideration air quality inside buildings. All this in view of a report issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) which warned that healthier homes and workplaces could prevent around 1 million deaths, globally, a year, and explicitly singled out indoor air quality as a factor. Reactive gaseous air pollutants (CO, NOx, O3, SO2), particulate matter (PM) and greenhouse gases CO2 and CH4 sensors are now way too affordable be it sensors for domestic use (not very precise) or expensive fully-calibrated sensors whose data can even stand in courts of justice as they are certified to provide exact measurements as reference lab equipment. In addition to all of the above, several other smaller markets have also been identified as possible areas of business for Fermorite’s IoT line of services. These include for example home aquariums, cigar cabinets and various other applications where users would like to ensure that environmental conditions are always optimum and that abnormal conditions are immediately detected.

Fermorite’s expertise covers the full spectrum of Citrix IoT architecture components which can cover various usage scenarios in the enterprise and in the academia. The following diagram illustrates the cloud architecture of the Citrix Workspace IoT solution. Depending on the customer’s requirements and use cases, Fermorite can design and implement a bespoke solution based on the Citrix IoT architecture.

In addition to all of the above, several other smaller markets have also been identified as possible streams of revenue for Fermorite’s IoT line of services. These include for example home aquariums, cigar cabinets etc; applications where users would like to ensure that environmental conditions are always optimum and that abnormal conditions are immediately detected.

To address not only applications for green and clean buildings but to also be in a position to cater for any vertical market’s automation, control and cloud connectivity needs, Fermorite IoT will invest on a roadmap of tools and methodologies that essentially will be used as is on a wide variety of applications. This roadmap includes the identification and development of a robust hardware platform that will be compatible with Microsoft Azure’s suite of services and also the in-depth employment of Azure’s services.

Whilst the first three aforementioned aspects seem to now be quite mature, the latter one is of increasing interest world-wide. The consequences of atmospheric pollution are now getting a lot of attention as scientific evidence has indicated that indoor air pollution can be worse than outdoor pollutants in large and industrialized cities. The European Parliament is now looking at making amendments to the Energy.

As more IoT devices enter the workspace certain challenges are coming to the surface such as managing device security, network configuration and point to point communications. The Citrix IoT architecture addresses all these challenges and leverages the customer’s existing IT infrastructure deployed with Citrix Endpoint Management (former Citrix XenMobile). If you are an existing or potential Citrix customer, you now have the ability to deploy IoT devices, access events and insights and experience applications all through Citrix Workspace.

In addition to the above IoT applications, Fermorite specializes in the Citrix IoT stack which covers a multitude of usage scenarios around desktop and application virtualization and corporate mobile endpoint management in small form factor devices.

If you are an existing or potential Citrix customer, you now have the ability to deploy IoT devices, access events and insights and experience applications all through Citrix Workspace. Citrix has coined the term “future of work”, which includes end user use cases such as open seating, voice assisted workflows and mobile workflows. Citrix Ready Workspace hub, Alexa, and Apple TV are worthy examples of enterprise IoT devices which enable future of work use cases.