Senseering

The German start-up senseering GmbH has developed a software stack for the Internet of Things (IoT) and, on this basis, a GAIA-X-compliant cloud-based marketplace for IoT data. Companies, research institutes and private individuals can use it to acquire anonymised data sets from other parties. This information can be used to optimise production facilities and manufacturing processes, for example, and to speed up the digitalisation of workflows and services. One example of this would be predictive maintenance. Users can train AI and machine learning algorithms with the acquired data without having to interconnect the machines and systems themselves. These are then able to proactively recognise malfunctions – before failures occur and production processes are disrupted.
The marketplace "MyDataEconomy" and senseering’s IoT software stack are delivered in the form of virtual machines via the OVHcloud Public Cloud. Besides the outstanding performance and scalability, the high level of data protection was another major reason in favour of the OVHcloud solution. Just as for senseering and the MyDataEconomy platform, the guidelines of the European cloud initiative GAIA-X also have a high priority for OVHcloud. As a result, the architecture of OVHcloud's cloud platform guarantees complete GDPR compliance and the use of the highest security standards.

One component of senseering's offering is an IoT platform that is provided to users via the cloud "as a service". This means that users do not have to set up an IoT solution in their own company. Then there is the MyDataEconomy marketplace. It consists of a cloud catalogue through which customers can select and purchase metadata from machines and facilities for their own use. The participants of the marketplace act as equal "peers". This means that the data itself is not provided through the catalogue. Instead, participants of the marketplace exchange the data independently between themselves after an agreement has been concluded. The cloud catalogue thus serves as an intermediary.
Such an approach requires a public cloud platform that offers high availability, scalability and cost transparency. In addition, the cloud solution has to be designed for different types of workloads.
However, data security and data sovereignty play a particularly important role in a marketplace for IoT data. As a GAIA-X member from day 1, senseering has been working to create an open and transparent digital ecosystem in Europe. This secure and networked data infrastructure must meet the highest standards of data security and sovereignty. Users must have the guarantee that no unauthorised parties can gain access to sensitive production data. For this reason, a highly secure and, above all, trustworthy cloud platform is essential for senseering. Not least because the security of company data is a particularly high priority for companies in Germany when it comes to using cloud services. This also applies to the trustworthiness of the cloud service provider.
With OVHcloud, senseering has chosen a cloud provider whose public cloud offers security features such as granular access control and protected APIs (application programming interfaces). Even more important for the company was another point: having a partner in the cloud sector who, as a founding member of GAIA-X, shares the vision of a sovereign data infrastructure in Europe and whose solutions have enabled senseering to establish a basis of trust with their customers and between the users of the marketplace.

As part of the OVHcloud Startup Program, the cloud provider has made resources available to senseering from its public cloud environment. In this environment, different types of virtual machines (VMs) are hosted. Via these VMs, the start-up provides its customers with managed applications. The basis for this is formed by the OVHcloud cloud resources and the IoT software stack from senseering. The virtual machines range from "sandbox" instances, which are used for testing and creating prototypes, all the way through to production systems.

Most of these VMs have a simple structure as only individual nodes are launched. The core of such nodes consists of OVHcloud Public Cloud instances in which the data is stored and organised in blocks (block storage). OVHcloud was chosen as the "home" of these VMs because a secure, reliable and high-performance data exchange between the virtual machines is essential for a digital data marketplace like MyDataEconomy. OVHcloud's cloud infrastructure also supports this concept for another reason in particular: there are no additional fees for the network bandwidth required for these data transfers. This means a noticeably lower financial expense and comprehensive cost transparency for senseering and their customers.
With the help of OVHcloud, senseering has set up a decentralised peer-to-peer architecture in the provider's public cloud. It links the nodes to each other and with the marketplace. The latter is also hosted in the cloud of OVHcloud. Its central elements are a database cluster and a backend infrastructure based on the software container technology Docker.

“An IoT data platform like MyDataEconomy requires a public cloud solution that not only offers high performance and comprehensive scalability, but also maximum cost transparency as well as excellent data protection. That is why we chose OVHcloud."
Dr. Daniel Trauth, CEO at senseering GmbH

MyDataEconomy is the intermediary for the connection between the nodes. In this way, OVHcloud's public cloud infrastructure allows senseering’s customers to search for IoT data worldwide. With this data, they can, for example, optimise their solutions for condition monitoring (to continuously evaluate the condition of machines) and for predictive maintenance. In addition, OVHcloud also provides the basis for the framework through which users authenticate and authorise themselves, allowing senseering to use an all-in-one public cloud solution that offers sufficient flexibility for the expansion of the marketplace – the keyword being scalability.
Another argument in favour of OVHcloud's infrastructure was that the company's cloud services – just like senseering’s own offering – correspond to the core principles of the GAIA-X initiative: full compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the use of open standards and the application of the highest security standards. This is essential for a marketplace through which companies offer and acquire sensitive IoT data.

With OVHcloud, senseering has found a partner that supports the young company in a number of ways. For example, OVHcloud enabled the IoT specialist as part of its start-up programme to test and implement their marketplace in a powerful, flexible and cost-optimised public cloud environment – including the "data pipelines" that customers use. Additionally, OVHcloud's cloud environment meets the highest requirements in terms of data protection and security. As a cloud provider with headquarters in the European Union, OVHcloud fulfils all GDPR requirements and is subject to EU jurisdiction. Users can be confident that sensitive data will not fall into the hands of third parties, as is possible with US providers due to the CLOUD Act, which allows authorities to access, on request, any data hosted on servers of US cloud providers worldwide. With the European provider, customers retain full control over their information assets at all times. In this way, senseering is able to offer customers an already GAIA-X-compliant and sovereign as-a-service offering today.
From senseering’s point of view, there is also another point in favour of OVHcloud: the OVHcloud Marketplace. It gives companies of all sizes and from all industries the opportunity to make their services available to a broad customer base via OVHcloud. For this reason, senseering also intends to use the OVHcloud Marketplace and the provider's cloud infrastructure to offer small and medium-sized companies an affordable IoT solution and access to IoT data.

"OVHcloud gives us the opportunity to market our marketplace for IoT data via a trusted and highly scalable public cloud platform. This is a prerequisite for bringing our solution closer to a broad target group."
Dr. Daniel Trauth, CEO at senseering GmbH