Overview

akenza - a straight forward solution to complex IoT challenges

Akenza is the IoT application enablement platform, allowing you to build great IoT products and services with value. It connects, controls, and manages IoT devices; all in one place.

Components

The main components of akenza are Device- and Connectivity Management, Data Processing, Connectors & Storage, and the Rule Engine.

Device Management

With the device management of akenza, you have full control over all your assets at any time. It is built to support you in every phase of the device lifecycle and offers you a comprehensive set of features to manage your device fleet at scale.

Connectivity Management

The connectivity integrations allow you to easily integrate and manage devices of different connectivity providers.

Further, the Connectivity-as-a-Service offering allows to quickly onboard devices without establishing a contract with a network provider.

Data Processing

Data flows allow you to easily configure a complex data processing pipeline, which can then be applied to devices of your fleet. Akenza makes sure that the data is reliably processed and forwarded or stored.

Connectors & Storage

With connectors, you can specify the destination of your data and store it for future use.

Rule Engine

With the rule engine, you can analyze and process data of multiple devices simultaneously and trigger actions when needed. Actions include sending SMS or email notifications, sending downlinks or aggregating your data.

Data Processing Pipeline

The akenza data processing pipeline is structured as follows:

Key Concepts

Devices

Devices (a "thing") represent deployed hardware in the field, capable of connecting to the internet via a supported Connectivity. Devices send data via Uplinks and optionally receive commands via Downlinks. Devices can be managed in the Asset inventory.

Data

All data are sent from the devices to the cloud (often telemetry and state; such as environment measurements). Usually, devices send data either interval or event-based. Uplinks trigger the data processing pipeline specified by a data flow.

Data can be partitioned into Topics based on its purpose or schema. This helps to retain the structure of the data.

One data point is referred to as a Sample, it is uniquely identifiable by the device id, topic, and timestamp.

Integrations

Integrations allow managing Devices of connectivity providers (i.e. Swisscom LPN, Loriot, Actility, or TTN). This allows to integrate with already existing IoT deployments and manage all Assets from a single point.

Connectivity

Supported communication protocol such as LoRaWAN, HTTP, MQTT or CoAP.

Data Flow

Data flows define the data processing pipeline:

• Device Connector: Specify the connectivity for connecting a device

• Device type: Specify the type of device and implement payload decoding and encoding

• Output connectors: Specify one or multiple data destinations

Downlink

Downlinks are commands that can be sent to a physical device (actuator or sensor) to either configure the device (i.e. sending interval) or trigger an action on the device (i.e. turning on the lights, closing the blinds). Downlinks are only possible for the following connectivities: MQTT and LoRaWAN

Rules

Rules allow applying business logic to incoming data in order to trigger actions or alarm notifications.

Output Connectors & Rule Actions

Output connectors allow specifying the data destination for a data flow, while rule actions are the response to a triggered rule. Examples include data storage using the akenzaDB connector and notifications using the mail.