In the rapidly evolving landscape of industrial and enterprise data, the seamless integration of operational technology (OT) data with cloud services is essential for driving innovation, efficiency, and competitiveness. Combining OT and IT data causes numerous challenges as OT systems often utilize legacy technologies and proprietary protocols, whereas IT systems typically rely on modern, standardized technologies. Additionally, it often requires complex architectures and complicated data processing.
One notable player in this domain is Crosser.io, a Swedish software company specializing in stream analytics and intelligent integration. With a global presence and a strong focus on the industrial manufacturing sector, Crosser.io has positioned itself as a key facilitator in the journey of getting OT data to Microsoft Azure and solving the challenges that go along with that.
Who is Crosser.io?
Crosser.io is a Swedish software company that specializes in stream analytics and intelligent integration for industrial and enterprise data. It offers a powerful low-code platform designed to empower users to create, test, and deploy data pipelines, integrations, and analytics across diverse environments – be it on-premise, in the cloud or on the edge. Crosser.io has customers in more than 20 countries, mostly in the industrial manufacturing sector and collaborates with leading partners like Aveva, Databricks and Microsoft Azure to provide comprehensive solutions for its clients. Crosser can complement these solutions in various ways, such as transforming, harmonizing, and enriching data, bridging OT and IT systems, deploying advanced analytics and machine learning, and connecting to any third-party system or cloud service.
Core Capabilities of Crosser.io
1. Low-Code Platform for IoT and Streaming Data:
Crosser.io provides a low-code platform that enables users to build robust data pipelines for both IoT and non-IoT data. This empowers organizations to quickly adapt to changing data requirements without the need for extensive coding expertise.
2. Extensive Data Connectors:
With over 800 data connectors, Crosser.io ensures seamless connectivity to a wide array of data sources, including Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) such as Aveva, various SQL databases and OPC servers and can communicate over the MQTT protocol.
3. Azure Integration:
Crosser.io is well-integrated with Azure IoT resources, including IoT Hub, Event Hub, IoT Edge and Event Grid. This integration facilitates a smooth transition of OT data to Azure, enabling organizations to leverage Azure's powerful cloud services. By implementing crosser.io in your Azure IoT architecture, you can leverage the many data connectors and advanced analytics capabilities. For example, combining crosser.io and Azure IoT Edge allows you to implement advanced streaming analytics functions on Azure IoT Edge without any software development. You can also use the Crosser collector modules to get data from your machines into the edge hub.
4. Transformations and Advanced Analytics:
Crosser.io offers a rich set of transformation and advanced analytics possibilities within its platform. Users can perform data aggregations, transformations and enrichment (e.g. calculations, adding statistics, applying conditional logic or filtering, ...) , as well as deploy advanced streaming analytics functions directly on the source data. This enhances the value extracted from OT data before it reaches Azure. The demo below shows an example of aggregating the data before sending it to IoT Hub.
5. Simplifies your architecture
Crosser.io simplifies the overall architecture by leveraging its connectivity and compute functionalities. This reduction in complexity translates to more streamlined processes, faster integration, and ultimately, lower TCO.
How Crosser.io works
Crosser can either be installed as a service in the cloud (fully managed), as a hybrid solution (Crosser cloud combined with on-premise nodes. Crosser Nodes are deployed on your infrastructure using Docker containers or as a Windows service) or on the edge. On the edge device, Crosser.io is delivered as a docker container, with the different Crosser flows centrally managed and updated by the platform. However, deploying and maintaining the Crosser container on the edge device is the responsibility of the user.
The Crosser Node is deployed in a Docker container in a small footprint. It scales with hardware up to 100.000 messages per second and beyond. It allows infinite scaling for Flows-as-a-Service when hosted by Crosser in our serverless architecture based on Microsoft Azure. It has an integrated HTTP Server and MQTT broker.
Crosser licensing and onboarding
Crosser has two product editions: Crosser IIoT, which is used for industrial IoT, and Crosser IPA, which is used for intelligent automation and pipelines without IoT data. Both editions use the same platform but have different licensing schemes. Crosser offers a pay-as-you-go option for small and initial deployments with maximum flexibility. If you commit to a monthly consumption, Crosser offers a lower price per consumption. Crosser provides an onboarding package for POCs, which includes a three-month license, consulting, and support. Alternatively, crosser offers a one-month free trial, but without consulting and support. For more information on the pricing & features, you can visit: Features and Pricing | Crosser Platform.
Conclusion
To conclude, Crosser.io facilitates the integration of OT data into Microsoft Azure, addressing complexities through its low-code platform. Offering extensive data connectors and Azure integration, Crosser.io enables organizations to transform, enrich, and analyze data before transitioning it to Azure, thus simplifying architectures and reducing overall complexity. With deployment options spanning cloud, hybrid, and edge environments, Crosser.io empowers users to streamline processes and unlock the full potential of their data. By simplifying data connectivity and data transformations, Crosser.io is a welcomed addition to the IoT landscape.
