Sauter Cloud
About Client: The SAUTER Group has been delivering equipment and software solutions for intelligent building management and automation for over a century, operating from its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, and a production facility in Freiburg, Germany.
Technologies: The project utilized C#, .NET 6, Angular, Azure DevOps, Azure SQL Database, Docker Containers, Identity Server, Azure IoT Hub, Azure Service Bus, Azure Table Storage, CosmosDB, Azure Web Apps, Azure Functions, Azure SignalR, and Playwright.
Challenge: One of the primary challenges in developing Sauter Cloud was navigating the complexities of a distributed ecosystem involving connected devices and buildings. This required us to design cloud connectors that could be deployed on-site to facilitate communication between hardware devices and Sauter Cloud Services. We needed to carefully structure the Azure Cloud infrastructure to ensure continuous reliability and low latency for automating heating, climate control, and lighting in office buildings. The cloud connectors also needed to intelligently filter out unnecessary data before sending it to the cloud services, ensuring that only the data requested by a user on a dashboard was transmitted.
Solution: The user interface of the Portal was developed using the Angular framework and Visual Studio Code, while the Cloud Communication Services were built with C#, .NET 6, and Visual Studio, following a microservices architecture. The cloud connector software operates as Docker containers on IoT Edge devices, also written in C#, .NET 6, and Visual Studio. Microsoft Azure DevOps was utilized for the continuous integration and deployment of Cloud Services components to Azure Cloud. Testing automation was facilitated by Playwright. From the outset of the project, we provided guidance to Sauter on defining requirements, breaking down tasks into manageable units, and designing the system architecture. We organized the workflow in an agile manner, enabling us to adapt to evolving requirements as they emerged.