Product
With every version of Connhex you'll get:
- a state-of-the art data collection infrastructure. Simply put, this is an entity responsible for receiving data and storing it efficiently into a database
- every service included in Connhex Cloud
- Connhex Control: Connhex's device management application. Think of it like an admin-level device management application for all the devices connected to Connhex: you can see what messages are coming from each device, send commands and configuration to devices
- out of the box Grafana integration to create custom dashboards
Connhex AI and Connhex Edge licenses are billed separately instead.
Absolutely not.
Connhex has been designed to be the foundation for your product, with an emphasis on "your". Moreover, Connhex is not yet another white-label platform: if you're using one of those, you can probably customize the both the logo and the branding - but your most knowledgeable customers will still be able to tell what white-label platform you're using.
Needless to say, we are very careful in sharing information. Some of the companies using Connhex were gracious enough to provide a testimonial: this is, of course, optional. Every success story was shared with the customer involved before publication.
It really depends on your needs. A few examples:
- if you plan to use Connhex to gather data and create dashboards, you can leverage Connhex's Grafana integration. Let Connhex do the heavy lifting for you - getting data from devices into a database - and build your own dashboards to visualize those data. A typical use case for this is the creation of internal dashboards to monitor company equipment
- if you need to create a complex web application that includes more advanced logic than simply collecting and visualizing device data - think users management, handling user-devices associations, generating reports - you'll need to hire a software development team, typically a software house or a web agency. The advantage in using Connhex is two sided, the first being cutting down time to market, since developers be able to use all the additional services included in Connhex through API calls. The second one deals with demand and supply: there are many great companies that can develop beautiful apps, less of those know all the nitty-gritty details involved in getting data from intermittent sources and storing it efficiently. By choosing Connhex, you are expanding the pool of potential suppliers for the solution and lowering the total cost dramatically.
- if you need to create a mobile app, all of the previous still applies with a single exception - you'll probably need to hire dedicated mobile developers instead of a standard web agency
These are just examples: if you're not sure whether your solution could benefit from leveraging Connhex or not contact us and we'll take a look at it together.
The main differences between the three versions are their features and performances. Broadly speaking about performances, there are two factors that scale the cost of a data collection infrastructure:
- how much data is involved
- what the required availability for the infrastructure is. For example, are you okay with the system being down for a few hours in a year or not?
Some Connhex versions are engineered to auto-scale as the data flow goes up, whereas others have been optimized to work with relatively low hardware resources.
Of course you can: just get in touch and we'll migrate all of your data. Downgrading is a bit trickier, since we have to figure out how to handle excess data - but that can be done too!
The short answers is: yes, but.
You can definitely piece together many open-source projects and implement the missing functionalities Connhex offers. You can also implement it yourself from scratch. However, besides the fact you'd be giving up on all the optimizations we spent years to achieve, there are a few things to consider:
- open-source components are typically developed in isolation. While this is why open-source is great for lots of infrastructural stuff (we didn't write an MQTT broker from scratch, rest assured!), you can't build a great product by forcing together pieces that are not intended to work this way. This is another reason why, if you decide to go the in-house route, you'll need to write a lot of it yourself.
- sad as this is, open-source funding is a hard problem in itself. You should also factor in the risk of the project you're using to be abandoned in the future
- creating something is just a fraction of the work. The real deal is testing it, smoothing out edge cases and making sure it's production-grade
- once you bring a project in-house, it immediately becomes both an asset and a liability. You should compare the benefits of building it yourself with the costs of monitoring, maintaining and updating it. Do you have a dedicated team or do you need to build one? What's your core business and where are you subtracting resources from?
Keep in mind the total cost of ownership: you'll need to code your solution, test it, validate it, monitor it, maintain it and support it. Look here for a detailed comparison between Connhex and custom projects.
Connectable is the general term we use to describe anything that can connect to Connhex (a bit of a tongue-twister, we know).
The difference between an edge and a device is actually very simple. An edge is a physical electronic device that is running Connhex Edge, whereas a device is a generally simpler object sending messages to Connhex and receiving commands from it. In short, you can think of edges as super-powerful devices that leverage Connhex Edge's functionalities.
You can read more here.Plans and pricing
We used to and it didn't work.
Connhex is tailored for device manufacturers: each one of them has different requirements, and we haven't been able to come up with a suitable pricing strategy. We'd rather invest some time in listening to your requirements and drafting a dedicated quote than pointing you towards a plan that includes features you'll never need.
We know this is not ideal, but couldn't come up with anything better. Just give Connhex a chance and reach out: you'll get a ballpark figure immediately and we'll work together to come up with a tailored proposal!
No, you don't. Just contact us before migrating the system and we'll generate a new license, while deactivating the previous one. If you want to clone Connhex on a different server, keeping two active installations, you need to pay an extra license instead. This may be the case if you want to provide two of your customers with two identical but separate platforms based on Connhex.
Of course, it will still work: but without an active Connhex Cloud subscription, neither support nor future updates for Connhex Edge will be available.
As for all of Connhex's components, a dedicated support contract is available for Connhex Edge too.We'll get in touch to find the best solution for your needs. In the meantime, your Connhex instance will keep operating as usual.
GDPR
GDPR is a commonly used shorthand to identify the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).
You can find the complete regulation here.
How we approach GDPR compliance is a prime example of what we mean when we say Connhex is an IoT suite, not a platform.
We offer a comprehensive solution for device manufacturers: legal aspects are just as important as technical ones if your goal is to provide a service to your users. GDPR compliance is one of those things that comes easy if one keeps it as a constraint during the initial design phase: otherwise there could be fatal flaws impossible to patch.
And if you're not convinced on the importance of protecting personal data just from a moral standpoint, sanctions can be quite heavy (see below).
No, you're not - and incidentally you won't be by choosing any IoT solution.
You should have a 360-degree view when reasoning about GDPR. For example, no one but your company can:
- adhere to the principles relating to the processing of personal data (Article 5). One above all: you are expected to only acquire data relevant to the purpose of processing (data minimisation, see also Article 25)
- establish whether a data protection impact assessment is needed (Article 35)
- designate a data protection officer (Article 37)
To the best of our knowledge: no, there isn't - nor it can exist at all.
If you have a role in deciding what data is collected, you are the data controller: there's no way any supplier can guarantee your compliance to GDPR - no matter what their sales representatives say 😉
In GDPR terminology, Compiuta is a data processor. This means Compiuta (or any other data processor) must:
- provide sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures in such a manner that processing will meet the requirements of the Regulation and ensure the protection of the rights of the data subject
- process the personal data only on documented instructions from the controller (you)
- ensure that persons authorised to process the personal data have committed themselves to confidentiality or are under an appropriate statutory obligation of confidentiality
- assist the controller by appropriate technical and organisational measures, insofar as this is possible, for the fulfilment of the controller's obligation to respond to requests for exercising the data subject's rights
- make available to the controller all information necessary to demonstrate compliance
For the complete list of obligations, see Article 28.
The GDPR includes consultation between the actions performed on personal data that classify as processing - see Article 4.
Since we need to maintain, update and support Connhex instances, we need to have access to database clusters.
We don't take this responsibility lightly: Connhex databases containing personal data are accessible only to a limited number of people inside Compiuta and we keep a log of any action performed when accessing them.
There are two ways Connhex helps you with compliance:
- by implementing tools that address specific obligations or data subject rights. For a first look at what those are, see the GDPR compliance map: you can also contact us to get information about design details of those tools, should you need it.
- uses best practices and state of the art approaches to ensure security of processing (see Article 32)
See Article 83: up to 20.000.000 € or 4% of total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher.
Definitely: we have a clear understanding of what personal data means and have lots of resources you can access. Just contact us!
Support
Of course, we'd be delighted to. Just contact us and we'll get back to you.
We're definitely reachable by phone and ready to jump on a call if you'd like us to, but we prioritize product development and supporting current customers over new business. We don't have a dedicated sales team and reinvest all of the profits coming from Connhex into making it better.
To get the fastest response, you can contact us through any of the dedicated support channels we've shared with you. If you're not able to access those, just send us an e-mail and we'll get in touch with you.