Massive demand for rapid, secure, and stable transmission of data and information in the age of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 is attracting solution providers to seek opportunities in the manufacturing space. Solace, a middleware solution provider founded in 2001 in Ottawa, Canada, also has its eyes set on the manufacturing sector in Taiwan, and is expanding its business in the market.
Solace is well established as a leader in event-streaming technology, with partners in a wide variety of industries including the London Stock Exchange, SAP, Airtel, NASA and more. Its services can also help power the smart manufacturing processes of "event-driven" enterprises, according to the company, which is seeking to expand its presence in Taiwan with assistance from the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei (CTOC).
Mathew Tam, Solace's VP of Taiwan and China region, explained to Digitimes that an "event" can be anything that happens within and to an enterprise, be it customer requests, inventory updates or sensor readings. An event broker, such as Solace's PubSub+ platform, facilitates the flow of real-time data between applications, microservices, and connected devices by pushing information to where it needs to go.
But the company's approach differs from competitors'. "Cisco built the hardware of transmission to disrupt the way that engineers build routers on software and how they send information from one system to another," Tam explained. "We want to raise the standard in event streaming, with the aim of enabling people to connect more easily and to exchange information over the application level."
Solace's PubSub+ platform can help modernize the manufacturing sector by integrating IT and OT across plants, data centers, clouds and geographies. This sets the foundation for real-time data flow between devices, buildings, assembly lines, fleets, containers and more. PubSub+ can also help transportation and logistics service providers monitor and manage assets on the move, weathering through the unpredictability of traffic and weather.
PubSub+ enables event-driven architectures, which is a way of building enterprise IT systems that lets loosely coupled applications and microservices produce and consume events.
Solace's solution can also be used to create an "event mesh," which is an architecture layer composed of a network of event brokers that allows events from one application to be dynamically routed and received by another application, no matter where the applications are deployed. It helps to liberate data trapped in legacy applications and enable IT teams to innovate using best-of-breed technology.
"Solace can connect with almost any kind of device, be it a computer, a machine deployed in the public or private cloud in any part of the world, even in extra-terrestrial space. Situational awareness, real-time responsiveness, and informed decision-making are the key benefits that companies will stand to gain by partnering with Solace. They can also look to integrate suppliers, business partners, and customers in real-time," Tam said.
He stressed that, regardless of the industry, Solace's PubSub+ platform enables real-time data flow between connected devices, IoT gateways and applications running in various clouds and data centers. "It can maintain continuous connections with millions of devices, intelligently filtering and routing information so that it is only sent to the applications and devices that need it to enable instant communication and interoperability," Tam said. "The scalability and flexibility of Solace's solution makes it the ideal messaging backbone for any IoT implementation use cases."
Despite the fact there are various IoT standards, Tam emphasized that Solace supports almost all standards available in the market for the convenience of their customers.
Data from the company's website claims it has a reliability of 99.999% for PubSub+ appliance pair services. It also says it serves 450 million connected citizens in India and delivers 28.4 million point-to-point messages per second with fan-out.
Although Solace has been working with several banks and government agencies in Taiwan for years, it is eager to add customers from the semiconductor and electric vehicle (EV) industries to their portfolio. "We are well placed to work with Taiwanese partners to offer best-in-breed solutions for businesses in smart manufacturing, supply chain and logistics."
As 5G facilitates high-speed data transmission in real time, cyber security would be essential for companies. "Solace helps customers send their data from one point to another. Think of us as a highway of sorts. The security side of things, relating to how information is encrypted, is decided by customers. We are happy to support our customers in their messaging goals regardless of which solution they use to comply with regulatory requirements," Tam said.
Mathew Tam, Solace's VP of Taiwan and China region
Photo: Company
