Telemetry Pipeline Agent for Industrial Automation License Management
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Industrial automation systems operating within private networks face challenges in tracking software asset usage and managing licenses due to limited communication with external devices, making it difficult to monitor and manage software and service usage effectively.
Innovation Solution
A system where nodes within the industrial automation system collect software asset data, generate data deltas representing changes, encrypt and consolidate these deltas, and transmit them to a remote server through telemetry pipeline agents, with self-healing capabilities to maintain data flow even if primary nodes or registries fail, ensuring secure and efficient license management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If industrial automation systems operate within private networks with limited external communication, then system security and isolation are improved, but software asset tracking and license management become difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a gateway device as an intermediary between the private network and the software asset management server. The gateway collects software asset data from multiple automation devices, consolidates it, and transmits to the external server. This mediator enables external communication while maintaining network isolation, resolving the contradiction between security and asset tracking capability
Solution Approach 2:
The system segments the data collection and transmission function into a separate gateway component, distinct from the automation devices and the management server. This segmentation allows each component to operate independently within its security boundary while still achieving coordinated software asset tracking across the distributed system
2Ease of operation
If all software asset data is transmitted to remote servers, then comprehensive license management is improved, but network traffic and data transmission overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential software asset data needed for license management from the complete device data set. The gateway identifies and transmits only relevant information (software identifiers, license keys, usage data) to the remote server, filtering out unnecessary data. This extraction reduces network traffic while maintaining effective license management
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of transmitting complete device operational data, the system performs partial action by sending only the specific software asset information required for licensing purposes. This selective transmission achieves sufficient license management capability with minimal network overhead
3Measurement precision
If data is transmitted frequently for real-time monitoring, then data accuracy is improved, but network bandwidth consumption and system overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway implements periodic data collection and transmission cycles instead of continuous real-time streaming. Software asset data is gathered at regular intervals and transmitted in batches to the remote server. This periodic approach maintains adequate data accuracy for license management while significantly reducing network bandwidth consumption compared to continuous transmission
Data Source
AI summary
A non-transitory computer readable medium stores instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to receive, from one or more processing nodes, data representative of usage and inventory of one or more software assets by one or more industrial automation devices of an industrial automation system that are communicatively coupled to the one or more processing nodes, determining a data delta for the industrial automation system that represents differences between the software asset data and a previous iteration of the software asset data, encrypt the data delta for the industrial automation system, and transmit the encrypted data delta for the industrial automation system to a remote server.