During your long day at the office you probably grab a pick-me-up from the vending machine, which never seems to be out of your favorite soft drink thanks to a network connection that sends inventory information and requests to the vending management company. On your way home from work, you call home for ideas on what to have for dinner, making the call using a Bluetooth connection between your cell phone and the communications system in your car.

On the way you stop at the drugstore to print some pictures from your digital camera at a self-service kiosk, then pick up dinner, paying with your credit card. Millions of transactions like these occur every day thanks to embedded systems that run inside vending machines, gas pumps, kiosks, price checkers, retail point-of-sale stations, and other devices within the retail, hospitality, and financial sectors.

At home, there are embedded systems in utility meters, appliances, security systems, set top boxes like DVRs, and home electronics. There are embedded systems in medical devices in hospitals and doctors’ offices and in factories or industrial sectors as part of machine-to-machine “M2M” interfaces like processing equipment, controllers, sensors, and robotics/automation equipment.

While embedded and remote devices are not always highly visible because of their behind-the-scenes role, it is predicted that more than 400 million embedded devices and M2M connections will emerge by 2014, due to the world’s mobile data traffic being transferred onto embedded computing systems at an increasing rate. For example, last year there were approximately 75 million embedded devices with cellular communication capability, but that is expected to triple to more than 2.2 billion by 2014. Meanwhile, the number of M2M devices capable of 4G wireless communications will explode, from just 40,000 this year to 12.6 million in 2015.

Unique Challenges

As the desire for embedded devices grows, so will the need for effective remote device management solutions. However, traditional enterprise IT management solutions are often not currently equipped to handle the configuration, security and remote management challenges posed by embedded devices.

Software residing on embedded devices must not only protect data, safeguard customer information, and meet enterprise standards for network, device and data security, but also work to reduce the occurrence of downtime. A retail kiosk that crashes represents a customer service problem, plus potentially lost revenue or penalties. Problems with robotics or industrial controllers can shut down a production line, costing manufacturers tens of thousands of dollars per hour.

Uptime is essential for embedded devices, but ensuring uptime can be challenging due to the necessity of embedded systems being operational 24/7. Maintenance is almost impossible, as the systems are installed in equipment or locations that are far from the physical reach of those responsible for support and service. Because of this, whenever and wherever embedded devices are used, remote management systems should be implemented.

Benefits of Remote Management

Here is a real-world example that shows the value of using remote device management solutions with embedded devices. One of our customers discovered a flash drive problem in 850 customer kiosks it had installed in stores across seven states. A software patch solved the drive problem, but the patch needed to be installed in each kiosk, which were hundreds of miles apart from each other. In tests, after reaching the store, it took more than an hour to manually update each kiosk – a process that involved taking apart the kiosk, loading the software through an interface port, testing it, then putting the kiosk back together again. Updating and testing each kiosk manually would take nearly 1,000 hours of labor performed by specialists, which doesn’t even count time spent traveling to stores.

Thankfully, the retailer had implemented a remote device management solution for its kiosks. Using the two-way communication ability in its device management solution, administrators remotely installed the software patch to the kiosks from a central location, then tested and monitored each kiosk to make sure the installation was successful. Because the device management solution enabled grouping, the update could be sent to each kiosks at once, instead installing it remotely one-by-one on all 850 devices. Two-way communication, grouping and the ability to remotely install and test enabled hundreds of kiosks to be fixed in minutes, instead of nearly 1,000 hours that manual updates would have required.

The Features that Add Value – What to Look For

The retail kiosk troubleshooting experience affirms the results of a study that found management tools can reduce unplanned IT system downtime by 65 percent, more than any other resource or strategy available. Since uptime is so important for embedded devices, monitoring and management features that help maintain uptime are extremely valuable. Here are the essential features of remote management solutions that administrators should insist on for embedded devices.

Secure and automated, two-way communication. Two-way communication is an essential feature for proactive management because it can alert administrators to performance issues before actual problems occur. Two-way communication systems can also receive status reports, utilize data and diagnostic information from embedded systems and provision security updates, and make software patches and other changes to them.

Remote access. Along with seeing what is happing inside an embedded device, support staff also needs the ability to fix potential problems. With remote access, administrators can perform troubleshooting without having to physically touch the device. Remote access minimizes downtime because it provides the centralized tools for faster problem resolution.

Device health information. With device health information, organizations can improve uptime by minimizing the time between when a problem occurs and when it is discovered. Remote device management solutions that automatically alert administrators when error messages are detected or when devices go offline enable issues to be identified and resolved faster. The management system also should be able to collect, store, and report information about utilization and uptime, unauthorized access attempts, and other historical data that can be used to help configure, manage, and secure the device.

Additional security. Remote device management solutions are not substitutes for building security safeguards into embedded devices, but can strengthen security. Embedded devices should be able to prevent hacking, secure data, and provide authentication for communication and data transfer. Device management solutions enhance these protections by giving administrators the ability to remotely lock down devices, selectively or completely wipe data, block communications and data transfer, and otherwise disable the device.

Multi-platform support. Remote management solutions can add value by supporting different types of devices, and integrating with existing enterprise management solutions. The management solution does not need to be device specific – the same solution used to support embedded devices could also be used to manage other assets, such as smart phones, PDAs and handheld computers, kiosks, POS terminals, industrial controls, etc.

Device management solutions that support network standards, such as Microsoft (News - Alert) Windows Mobile, Microsoft Windows and Embedded CE, and multiple smart phone and device platforms provide value by enabling the organization to leverage its investment in management capabilities across multiple assets. The value of leveraging will increase as organizations begin to manage increasingly large and diverse populations of embedded, mobile and wireless devices. To further leverage legacy investments, the management solution for embedded devices should support and integrate with enterprise management solutions that may already be in place, such as Microsoft Configuration Manager 2007.Administrators do not want a separate management solution for each different type of device they need to support, so they should invest in management solutions that can support a heterogeneous environment.

Embedded devices are all around us, their capabilities are growing, and the installed base is projected to grow into tens of billions. The possibilities are exciting, but organizations need to be careful to ensure that as their population of embedded devices grows, they have the ability to manage them. Vending machines, kiosks, industrial controllers, and other embedded systems don’t look like laptops or PDAs, but the principles and best practices for managing IT assets need to be applied to them. Wherever devices are embedded, remote management capabilities should be embedded with them so systems can be maintained reliably, efficiently, and securely.

Mark Gentile (News - Alert) is founder, president and CEO of Odyssey Software Inc, a pioneer in the mobile enterprise software market. He has led the design, development, and implementation of mobile enterprise solutions for many Fortune 500 companies across North America. Odyssey Software (News - Alert) is the creator of Athena, the industry's premier enterprise-class mobile and embedded device management product for today’s most popular device platforms including the Windows Embedded CE operating system. For more information visit: www.odysseysoftware.com.

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Edited by Stefania Viscusi