The Coronavirus Scare

We at Allxon are increasingly being approached by customers who want to understand what options are available for remote working, given that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has become a pandemic. Our partners are forced to work remotely and want contingency plans in case this virus continues for longer. The plan is to have concise options that doesn’t undermine security, integration or data protection obligations for businesses.

Governments are feeling the impact as the virus spreads across the USA, Europe, and the Middle East. Companies in these regions and elsewhere are trying to limit the number of people gathering and asking them to avoid public places and work premises. Most of Allxon’s customers are self quarantining or working from home as a possible solution against the virus spreading. But work cannot come to a standstill. Allxon, believes it has the solution to address the issue IT/OT managers need and that is to remotely control, troubleshoot, and manage all AIoT/IoT devices scattered across a business’s network of locations within the comfort of their home office.

The Workspace and Environment Has Changed

The Harvard School of Business surveyed its professors for recommendations on the impact of the COVID-19 virus on the workspace and they reached some interesting conclusions amongst them that businesses will form trust based cultures with employees,  help businesses pay it forward thereby making their customers do the same, and have remote work be strategic based on tools (Allxon’s Portal for example). Companies will transform the workspace with more informational devices like having AIoT kiosks which provide valuable market/ breaking news updates, or wall mounted hand sanitizing digital signage kiosks. Digital signage and kiosks will offer storyboards which display advertisements, messaging, videos, social media feeds, and health information. AIoT will cater to specific workspaces and highlight information dedicated to employee jobs. And, an ongoing initiative to have on-the-job training via digital signage and dedicated apps to update students/ employees/trainers on progress without placing a foot near anyone and keeping social distancing. Allxon helps businesses try to reduce travel expenditure to troubleshoot problems on-site and reduce higher labor (USA & Europe) costs and labor reductions as in the case of Japan.

Allxon’s OOB Device Management

AIoT device management can be maintained through the in-band cloud device management software module but when devices go through system crashes, OS crashes, irregular APP operations, under normal operations these fixes cannot be instantly resolved. Using Allxon’s Outof-Band technology, the aforementioned conditions can be resumed by cold switching the device on and off without personnel having to be onsite. This solution is the solution in light of recent Covid-19 epidemic curbs.

If or when the OS crashes on are mote device, IT/OT can easily reboot the device and resume monitoring and management functions without downtime. Once all remote devices have Allxon’s OOB enabler installed, one admin operator can take care of all issues without being at the location. 

Provisioning and OTA Updates

COVID-19 has restricted the workforce in many ways. With Allxon’s software, IT departments can reduce the number of people servicing frontline areas by provisioning and conducting over-the-air updates to maintain AIoT equipment remotely and without failure. Organizations can turn a negative into a positive with Allxon’s provisioning function. Under the platform, devices can be grouped, remotely setup to be configured, run software installations over-the-air, do status reports provisionally pushed at different times and time zones. Admins only have to set the group settings once in the portal then multiple. What we are doing to help during the COVID-19 pandemic devices can be deployed across the network to reduce cost of updating each device anytime or anywhere. Such deployments have already been active in real-time cases with a French customer reporting success in a project that needed 2,600 devices updated. Their result was a saving of 68% over initial setup costs and time taken based on previous projects.

Allxon’s Supported Services

Allxon offers a web-based interactive dashboard that safely retires and replaces end of lifecycle devices, provides  proactive 24/7 monitoring, configures device policies and provisioning, collects data analysis predictions, does batch group enrollment and provisioning, and offers remote support monitoring and reporting, customized services,  mass deployment, and disaster recovery.

In Conclusion

Businesses need a solution to troubleshoot their devices hands-free and without being on premise in part due to the Coronavirus but also to reduce costs. Protect the health and safety of employees while ensuring business operations are maintained at best practice levels and surely this epidemic will be successfully overcome.     

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