‍Importance of Uptime and Availability for Connected Products

When it comes to remote device management, monitoring device uptime is table stakes — a foundational aspect of ensuring operational continuity.

But solely relying on device uptime metrics is not enough.

Imagine you’re trying to remotely support a large deployment of smart lockers. A traditional measurement of uptime will only tell you about hardware or device health. Without knowing the status of all the additional locker components and software, you will never know if your locker solution is really doing what it needs to do.

Uptime metrics can fail to offer a comprehensive view of the overall availability of your connected product solution.

What would a more comprehensive view look like?

In this post, we’ll explore the differences between device uptime and solution availability.

We’ll also share how Canopy — the remote monitoring and management (RMM) software platform for connected products — helps technical teams improve product uptime, ensuring your connected products stay connected.

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A Technical Perspective on Device Uptime

Traditionally, device uptime monitoring revolves around tracking the availability of individual devices. Uptime monitoring focuses on technical parameters like network connectivity and hardware functionality.

For instance, common practices for measuring uptime include monitoring the check-ins of computers or simply detecting if peripherals are still attached to devices.

This approach is a good start, but there are several other critical components of a connected product that need to work for the product to function as the customer expects.

For another connected product example, consider a self-checkout kiosk:

If the computer server and payment peripherals used by the self-checkout kiosk are online and working but the onscreen software has crashed, no one can use the kiosk. Goodbye, frustrated customer.

Monitoring uptime alone would miss this problem: The device's uptime would be 100%, but the solution availability would be 0%.

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A Holistic Approach to Connected Product Availability

Instead, imagine a holistic approach for remote monitoring and management that incorporates additional data from the connected product solution.

A holistic approach considers both the uptime of individual devices and factors in all the other devices within the environment too — plus it monitors software application functionality and business logic.

A holistic approach to managing connected products gives you the big picture of availability.

In the smart kiosk example, the hardware is healthy, but software issues occur. Or business logic conditions aren't met (e.g., failed transactions or no inventory) and flagged to support teams as needing attention.

By monitoring holistically, connected products providers boost availability, reducing the number of support calls from upset customers — or lost transactions because the would-be customer gives up on the dis-connected product.

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Insights You Can Act on From Canopy

Canopy’s device management platform is built to give teams solution availability monitoring, offering real-time data and advanced analytics capabilities to always know the true status of your device.

Canopy makes it easy for your team to assess the performance of the entire device ecosystem, from individual devices to integrated connected products solutions.

Let’s return to the example of the smart locker from the beginning of this post:

Basic uptime monitoring only accounts for the locker’s central computer. But when these lockers are managed using Canopy's RMM software, you can monitor additional areas that are critical to holistic solution health. For example:

1.     Is the locker connected to power and the internet?

2.     Is the locker computer working and available (CPU, memory, Hard Drive, etc.)?

3.     Are all the locker sub-components (e.g., card reader, printer, scanner, etc.) working?

4.     Is the locker touch screen running the right software and showing up for customers?

Monitoring all these metrics allows you to go from basic online/offline uptime measurement to holistic solution availability, which more accurately reflects how the end customer interacts with the product. Customers don't care about the computer connectivity if the locker software is not doing what it needs to.

Canopy's availability monitoring goes beyond hardware uptime to integrate data from the locker’s software. Canopy then applies business logic to assess the overall effectiveness of the solution. For example, this might include analyzing transaction history, user interactions, and location-specific parameters.

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Business Logic and Solution Availability

When it comes to measuring availability, business logic plays a crucial role. Business logic makes data meaningful, interpreting and determining the operational status of the connected product solution. Organizations like ButterflyMX use Canopy to define and implement custom business logic rules tailored to specific requirements.

For instance, Canopy enables retailers to set usage thresholds based on historical trends, define operational hours for each kiosk location, and trigger alerts for potential issues such as session abandonment or hardware malfunctions.

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Use Canopy to Take Solution Availability to the Next Level

Device uptime monitoring is a vital aspect of remote device management, but it can fall short of providing the big picture.

Complementing uptime monitoring with a holistic approach — solution availability monitoring — streamlines support operations, leading to best-in-class customer experiences.

By leveraging real-time data, advanced analytics, and customizable business logic, Revel, a point of sale solution provider, increased solution availability by 50%.

Find out how Canopy can help your team uplevel its remote management capabilities. Reach out, and see what a holistic approach from Canopy can do for you.