Inovonics turns to Redis Labs

To build its new data analytics offerings with as little overhead as possible and closer to the sensors at the network edge, Inovonics turned to GCP as its virtual private cloud, running Redis Enterprise VPC, a fully automated database-as-a-service from Redis Labs. As Inovonics ramps its data analytics operations, it expects to take its cloud products into multiple markets leveraging Redis Enterprise as a cornerstone of its technology stack.

 

For most of its 30-year history, Inovonics has considered itself primarily a wireless technology provider. But with the onset of the big data era, the company quickly came to understand that the unique sets of data collected by its wireless devices and sensors also had tremendous application.

 

Inovonics uses Redis Enterprise on their IoT edge devices to push data to their gateways, as well as at their gateways to ultimately push data to their virtual private cloud on GCP. On GCP, Redis Enterprise ingests the data storing the millions of daily messages coming from Inovonics’ sensor devices and networks and providing a central view from which the data can be analyzed in the aggregate. Redis Enterprise also stores the application data model so that incoming messages can be correlated with representational information such as sensor location.

 

“As a small company, it’s very important that we outsource as much work to the cloud as possible,” says Lalit Pandit, software development manager at Inovonics. “Redis Enterprise’s easy compatibility with GCP, as well as its fully managed operations, allow our IT personnel to focus on the analytics we’re providing rather than maintaining the underlying environment. Redis Enterprise makes it possible to process a large amount of data generated by connected edge devices while adhering to low-latency requirements from millions of sensors every day. With its versatile support for many data structures, Redis Enterprise is perfectly suited to live in our edge devices, providing ultimate flexibility to our developers.”

 

In addition to its fully managed operations and seamless compatibility with GCP, Redis Enterprise VPC has many other unique attributes that made it an easy choice for Inovonics when deciding the engine that would drive its new data analytics operations:

 

• NoSQL structure. Inovonics wanted the simplicity that NoSQL database structures offer. “Relational databases are not very well suited for hierarchical data,” says Pandit. “With NoSQL Redis we have complete control at the lowest data level without conjoins or transactional overhead, allowing us to go straight to the metal.”
• High performance. Inovonics collects large quantities of data from millions of sensors, making high performance and responsiveness critical.
• Programmatic access. Inovonics wanted a seamless method of getting data to and from its applications. Redis is easy to program without requiring complicated SQL strings to convert data for application consumption.
• Small in-memory footprint. Redis Enterprise has a very small in-memory footprint, providing a good balance between performance and robustness.
• Redis on Flash. Available with all Redis Enterprise installations, Redis on Flash stores cold data in cost-effective Flash, reducing the need for expensive RAM.
• Fault tolerance with Google Cloud, Redis Enterprise and Kubernetes. Inovonics chose to deploy their applications on Google Kubernetes Engine to benefit from a container-centric cloud environment. With native Kubernetes support of Redis Enterprise on Google Cloud Platform, additional compatibilities exist that will allow Inovonics to further expand upon its existing investments in Redis Labs and Google Cloud Platform while simultaneously reducing complexity of infrastructure management.

 

“With Redis Enterprise on Google Cloud, customers gain an enterprise-grade application stack built on the power of the Google Cloud platform, delivering greater agility in developing modern applications even faster than before,” said Rob Schauble, VP Emerging Technologies at Redis Labs. “Inovonics is pioneering numerous business-critical use cases with Redis Enterprise as its database backbone. We fully embrace the challenge of providing the performance and stability customers come to expect of Redis Enterprise while continuing to innovate around the services our clients use, including the GCP and Kubernetes.”