The digital revolution in Internet of Things and “Smart” Industries are characterized by the convergence of technologies, rapidly advancing the industrial revolution forward and overlapping the boundaries between physical, digital and integrated objects. The speed of the digital revolution evolves at an exponential rate and cannot be compared by any means with previous technologies.

Intelligent Cloud Services and IoT can be employed in various fields where the potential of blockchain technology is realized and is now becoming a demand, rather than a ‘nice to have’. Intelligent Cloud Services have the proven potential to identify patterns and anomalies in visualised data generated by IoT sensors and integrated legacy systems. The accuracy of operational predictions using these cloud technologies is greater when compared to threshold-based monitoring systems. IoT and connected systems drive intelligent cloud ledgers & automation which makes sense of the data generated from sensor devices and applies it in the decision making process.

Smart Ostrich has learned extensively from this significant requirement in the digital revolution of “Smart” things to illuminate the role of such a digital ledger, in providing real time industry business critical systems information, real time supply chain data, global geofenced moving inventory data and security during data handling operations.

We realised how trusted transactions can address the solutions required by industry and from our learnings, have developed and deployed XeriC, the “Smart Ostrich Digital Ledger”, a Intelligent Cloud Service that not only addresses the abovementioned need for digital revolution and evolution, but also provides the global customer with encapsulated, encrypted security of their business data at the edge of the internet-facing vulnerability.

Smart Ostrich XeriC adopts linear and permanent indexed records which are maintained in a “Blockchain-like” cloud environment to overcome the vulnerability challenges from traditional digital ledgers and to provide the ability for bespoke deployments across our “converged” secure ledger. XeriC gains control of the device and records in the cloud repository and consequently the customer data blocks are maintained and guarded. IoT devices are sharing information via public networks which paves the way for vulnerability and the risks increase even more if cloud communications and data ingestions is involved.

The XeriC data repository and cloud management system use robust security implementations able to afford scalable, secure and verifiable platform roll outs. Our peer-to-peer model is a competent solution for the effective communication within the centralized client and hyrbid cloud server paradigm. XeriC transactions are verified using cryptographic techniques to authenticate and identify the data authenticity at a central authority using several encrypted protocols– yet provides multi-instance security across the global deployments for each customer.

Advantages of XeriC, The Smart Ostrich Digital Ledger

Converged Technologies Platform supporting Blockchain Governance

Under the prevailing IoT paradigm of available solutions, devices and transactions are all connected via a centralized cloud storage and processing service. This however creates an unsustainable long-term solution. As the number of connected devices and therefore the data volumes increase rapidly, the systems handling this tend to get overloaded and are unable to handle the processing load in its serial approach to acquire data and analyse it in real time, resulting in bottlenecks and inefficiencies.

XeriC can solve this thanks to its distributed nature, where the data storage network is duplicated across several devices while utilising convergence of technologies to provision the data into the XeriC network. This clever way of creating redundancy and optimising data acquisition from several technologies means data will always be close at hand when it’s needed, cutting down transfer times and meaning a single failure will have no consequence to business activity.

The key benefits of XeriC as a Converged Smart Digital Ledger of Blockchain-enabled technology for traceability and provenance is clear for asset transaction monitoring e.g. live inventory, custody and transfer of ownership records, compliance/quality records as well as in-transit events. All transaction metrics such as time, place, value, XeriC ID, owner and asset ID are recorded. Typical industries to directly benefit from XeriC are retail, transportation, logistics, mining, pharmaceutical, healthcare, security, building & energy management.

These advantages can be summarised as follows:

• Full provenance from origin to point of sale (peer-to-peer) for every asset life cycle
• Because there’s no centralized authority, single-point failure concerns become a distant memory, no matter how populated XeriC network is.
• Due to the accessible APIs provided by XeriC, enterprises can upload and search for core information and business data effortlessly in real time
• With data transactions taking place between multiple networks owned and administered by multiple organizations, a permanent, immutable record means custodianship can be tracked as data (or even physical items) pass between points in the supply chain.
• The data collected is stored on XeriC to ensure its immutability
• IoT devices are able to keep track of the entire logistics process by being deployed in the goods themselves, the vehicles used to transport the products, and the warehouses where the products are stored.
• Temperature, humidity and location data will be recorded in a real-time manner to ensure the authenticity and validity of the data.
• Build trust by leveraging XeriC and IoT equipment to avoid human errors and alteration in the supply chain.
• XeriC will record details of all transactions that take place between sensors & gateways with no human oversight. No human will be able to overwrite the record with inaccurate information.
• XeriC can play a major role in IoT and counterfeit prevention. The data stored on it is immutable, thus we can increase the traceability performance of customer products preventing counterfeiting.
• XeriC business intelligence gained from real consumer purchase records can assist the businesses in obtaining accurate consumer profiles and thereby achieve precision marketing and product forecasted consumption and replacement management.
• XeriC will be responsible for setting data standards for the core data generated during logistics and providing third-party verification for the data and the SCM process
• Setting data monitoring standards together with customers in accordance with the business demands and industry requirements, XeriC will identify problems in a timely manner and ensure the data stored is authentic and reliable.
• By leveraging Blockchain enabled IoT technology, XeriC can facilitate in reducing labour costs, identifying problems, controlling risks, reducing economic losses and improving overall efficiency.
• XeriC improves security by providing real time alerts on asset tamper events across the duration of the entire supply chain – minimizing losses and aiding in the identifying of weaknesses in business critical systems traditionally not visible to customers.
• Due to the enabled ability to forecast and predict behaviours across the specific “chain” XeriC can improve efficiency in production, manufacturing, turn around times, reduce dwell times at depots, improve security and customer confidence on authenticity of products being delivered from source to customer using XeriC

Due to faster access to accurate data across the entire asset ownership life cycle customers will gain vastly improved insight into business critical systems with shorter time to evidence based decisions, thus effecting the business in shorter time reducing losses and optimising gains and profitability.