Competitive advantage thanks to customised IoT solution

“Our wishes and requirements were fully met. And our customers now have a leading-edge diagnostic tool at their disposal.”

Bernd Riedel, Head of Strategy & Marketing at Selectron Systems AG

Task: Monitoring solution for rail vehicles

Selectron Systems AG offers automation solutions for all kinds of rail vehicles and thus operates at a global level in the market. The Selectron fleet monitoring solution is designed to enable diagnostic data from any sensor, such as speed, brake temperatures or door faults, to be transmitted in real time over the Internet and then processed and evaluated online and made actively available to staff to alert them to faults.

This provides various options for preventive vehicle maintenance: faster response times for service incidents reduce vehicle downtimes. This means that the availability of transport services can be maintained at a high level. In addition, advance reservation of replacement parts reduces maintenance or repair times.

Requirements: Secure, scalable and flexible

This project presented a variety of challenges: Secure and stable communication between the vehicle and backend system had to be ensured. The backend was to be operated on a platform that allows scaling to a large number of vehicles distributed around the world, yet was to be cost-effective to operate. Apart from scalability and security, the solution was also to be flexible in order to be able to absorb peak loads when receiving diagnostic data and therefore ensure the availability of the backend system.

Implementation: IoT solution with Microsoft Azure

If it had been attempted to implement these non-functional requirements with in-house infrastructure, it would not have been profitable for Selectron. The costs for data centres, hardware and personnel would have been too high. A Swiss hosting provider was also out of the question because, on the one hand, this would not have allowed the required flexibility (balancing peak loads through automatic vertical scaling) and, on the other hand, the major public cloud providers, such as Amazon and Microsoft, offer services on their cloud platforms that are tailored to the Internet of Things.

Thanks to their longstanding experience with cloud platforms, the bbv experts evaluated the Microsoft Azure product as the ideal solution and presented it to the customer. The Azure Cloud offers various services that can be rented out-of-the-box and already provide the required scalability, security and flexibility.

Feasibility was demonstrated as part of a proof of concept and a detailed total cost of ownership (TCO) calculation was prepared. The TCO produced by the bbv experts allowed Selectron to develop a business model for fleet monitoring.

Based on these insights, the Selectron fleet monitoring solution was then finally brought to market maturity in just one year and successfully delivered to pilot customers. The requirements with regard to security, scalability, availability and costs were fully met.

Added value for Selectron

• Thanks to the comprehensive cloud and IoT know-how of the bbv experts, a forward-looking, innovative solution was developed.

• By renting cloud services, the required security, scalability and availability was successfully achieved without the need to programme anything.

• The time-to-market was minimised thanks to the swift availability in the cloud.

• Using agile processes, the needs of end customers can be incorporated in the product backlog at all times and implemented promptly.

• The customer has no costs for investment in infrastructure. The operating costs are minimal.

Our services in the project