Cambridge company solves remote management headache for niche equipment manufacturers
Cambridge, UK 7th February 2012 Niche electronic equipment manufacturers are often required to provide a sophisticated management system to enable their equipment to be remotely controlled by its users. Too often the time and cost to develop such a system can be on a par with, or even greater than, the development of the core equipment itself.
To address this, Cambridge based Controllis Limited has launched the first embedded remote management and control system uniquely aimed at niche manufacturers. “Our embedded solution allows niche equipment manufacturers to provide the remote management functionality that their customers are looking for without the in-house development cost and time” Controllis Chairman Dr David Cleevely said. “Our system offering allows such companies to focus on their key product differentiators while offering remote management and control performance that even their larger competitors will struggle to offer.”
The Controllis embedded control solution includes a controller with a nine band UMTS modem with GPS and a central management server designed to manage thousands of remote devices. The embedded controller has two processors, one for analog and digital interface control, and one designed to run a wide variety of applications for communications management, security and local control of the managed device. In addition to the UMTS modem there are a number of satellite back-haul options for areas where there is little or no cellular coverage. “We have embedded a local API option in the product” said Controllis Director of Software Mark Anderson. “This allows companies using the embedded controller to run a wide variety of their own applications to control their equipment.” The Controllis embedded solution is aimed at equipment manufacturers in the communications, renewable energy, environmental monitoring, remote payment and security equipment sectors. The Controllis embedded controller incorporates the same security features as its own controllers including an automated mutual authenticated software upgrade system that prevents the installation of viruses or malware on any of their remote systems.
The Controllis development team has a background in telecommunications hardware and software, power generation, defence and the formula 1 motorsport sector. The company, founded in 2008, is privately owned and funded by the management team, a number of private investors and Cambridge based Martlet.
