Wingo IoT: AWS IoT Solutions Position Startup for Rapid, Secure Scalability

Wingo IoT is an Oregon-based startup that integrates inexpensive IoT and legacy automation systems into one intelligent solution for industrial applications. Its key value proposition lies in collecting critical data for operational analytics, AI and ML modeling, and insurance premium and claim reductions.

Established in April 2018 by an experienced technical team, Wingo focused its early development efforts on local sensor networks and isolated edge devices for data collection. The company’s hybrid IoT solution included 100% offline monitoring at sites and low-cost methods for collecting and managing facility data.

From the beginning, Wingo was aware their initial cloud architecture would require major improvements to meet stringent availability and security requirements for modern enterprise applications. A growing pipeline of large industrial customers motivated CTO Glynn Fouche to approach Effectual for a Well-Architected Framework Review as well as expert advice on Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT solutions.

Starting with Well-Architected best practices to build long term success

Fouche recognized Wingo needed to properly leverage cloud services in order to best serve their customers. In particular, he wanted to set the young venture up for success from the start by aligning Wingo’s development process with the 5 Pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and authorized Well-Architected reviewer, Effectual frequently helps early-stage companies leverage cloud-based solutions for projects ranging from proof of concept to full-scale custom software development. In this case, it was clear that with few developers, limited resources, and impending customer rollouts, Wingo was on a tight schedule to identify critical issues for remediation, improve real-time reporting, and operationalize its development process.

Given the company’s aggressive timeline, our team of solutions architects completed a thorough Well-Architected review and remediation in less than three months. During the process, we uncovered 34 high-risk issues requiring attention.

In the process of addressing these key issues, Effectual’s contributions include:

• Developing cost predictions for company revenue model
• Adopting a flexible consumption model to reduce development to cost ratio and increase product margins
• Designing and implementing DevOps process for long term scalability
• Establishing data storage plan leveraging a combination of Amazon DocumentDB, Amazon S3, AWS Glue and Amazon Redshift for quickly indexing data with instant access
• Ensuring security compliance in a multi-tenant environment by isolating sensitive data
• Creating NOC dashboard using AWS Lambda for real-time monitoring and business logic for pulling analytics
• Deploying Amazon CloudFront to move small json payloads of dynamic content
• Leveraging API Gateway as the medium for mobile and web apps to trigger backend API services in AWS Lambda
• Providing security and disaster recovery analysis as well as recommendations for a secure, highly available, and fault-tolerant architecture

In addition, implementing Well-Architected best practices has strengthened Wingo’s confidence it can serve larger customers and meet their strict business and compliance requirements. Based on past experience, Fouche believes Wingo is much better prepared to handle comprehensive due diligence and security audits. The review process and documentation will also have a significant impact on the company’s ability to raise capital and could add significant value in the event of a purchase.

In collaboration with Effectual, Wingo’s next steps include documenting security practices as well as failover and recovery recommendations for performance reliability. These steps are critical as the company develops its cloud-based data architecture, user interfaces, and API gateways for external integrations.

Results & Next Steps

With the Well-Architected review complete, Wingo is now positioned to approach both new customers and potential investors with greater confidence in its ability to receive, process and store data in the cloud and offer powerful data insights for driving optimal business outcomes.