Enabling the Internet of Things: Eurotech

The Silicon Review

“The IoT is big news because it ups the ante: ‘Reach out and touch somebody’ is becoming ‘reach out and touch everything.” – Parker Trewin

Nowadays, customers can get valuable device data into their business applications at an affordable price; faster and better than ever before. For companies, a proper IoT implementation offers a vision of valuable new horizons and opportunities, or at least is a must-have tool in this new age of global competition and always-on culture. One cannot afford to ignore the vision and promise of the Internet of Things in a world increasingly based on efficiency improvements, customer experience, customer engagement and revenues.

Eurotech is a leading player in the embedded market offering a broad product portfolio ranging from boards and purpose built devices to high performance computing systems. Established in 1992, Eurotech has been delivering distributed device solutions (hardware and software) for more than two decades now. This valuable experience has been made available also in terms of software products to customers and system integration partners in a market where the company is positioned clearly as one of the technology leaders in the industrial Internet of Things.

Eurotech provides a full ‘operating system’ for the IoT to get companies connected quickly and simply, so that they can concentrate on their applications. It is about dissecting and encapsulating the complexity of an end-to-end distributed computer system implementation from the field devices to the cloud or enterprise application, way beyond the development phase, simplifying the deployment and operation of M2M/IoT infrastructures.

IoT Security Strategy
Security in IoT projects is more than the combination of some “perimeter defense” security solutions like white & black listing, firewalls and encrypted communication channels. While these elements are important, Eurotech believes that security is significantly improved by incorporating proper authentication methods, the use & management of certificates and especially an overall architecture & design that prevents many possible attack scenarios. The Eurotech IoT building blocks are designed in such a way as to offer the best-in-class authentication, communication security and software validation mechanisms, not to mention the anti-tampering features on the service-gateway. Furthermore, the combined solution from edge devices to Cloud platforms have to be validated and audited on an on-going basis by external
security specialists.

Product & Service Offerings
Besides IoT hardware like the DynaGate (Transportation) or ReliaGATE (industrial, manufacturing) product families, IoT solutions require well-designed software and communication services layered on top of that hardware. This is why an important element of Eurotech’s offering is around software, tools and services allowing it to provide a complete set of technical building blocks for IoT solutions to partners and customers.

Starting from the bottom, that is, from the hardware layer of the gateway, Eurotech offers an application framework called the Everyware Software Framework (ESF), which by increasing flexibility and interchangeability of device software does provide new levels of investment protection when it comes to embedded software. ESF is one particularly important building block of the device software which speeds up the development of the specific vertical application or business logic and is based on Java and OSGi. Another very important building block, on top of the communication layer, is an IoT/M2M platform called Everyware Cloud which integrates easily into existing enterprise IT infrastructures – offering simple access through standard APIs to real-time and historical data from devices. In addition, this IoT Integration Platform also offers device life cycle features that ensure a smooth deployment and management of these devices in the field. This IoT/M2M integration platform is certainly also available for on-premise and private cloud deployment.

In addition to the company’s hardware and software solutions, Eurotech provides consulting services and a scalable “pay as you go” model which facilitates the adoption of IoT technology for customers and system integration partners, by minimizing risk and simplifying the IoT proof of concept.

Global Footprint
Eurotech is headquartered in Amaro, UD, Italy. It has offices spanning across the globe in countries such as Italy, United Kingdom, France, China, Japan and USA.

The Road Ahead
Eurotech’s mission is to integrate state-of-the-art computing and communication technologies into innovative solutions to improve
Customers’ competitiveness and their ability to cope with the amazing evolution of digital technologies.

Knowing the Key Executive
Roberto Siagri, Co-Founder, President and CEO Since 1992, Roberto has been dedicating himself to setting the direction of the company through his visionary leadership. While keeping the lead on the technological evolution of the products, he soon moved into marketing and sales to drive the business development of the company. Since the year 2000, he is in charge of the definition of the strategy and the business model of
Eurotech. In addition to his commitments within Eurotech, he is a member of the Italy-Japan Business Group as well as of the Innovation Board of Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. He is also Vice Chairman of DITEDI, the DIgital TEchnologies DIstrict of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, and member of the Technical-Scientific Committee of Friuli Future Forum. Roberto holds a degree in Physics from the University of Trieste.