CrateDB Blog | Development, integrations, IoT, & more

Breaking Data Silos: How CrateDB & Crosser Transform Industrial Analytics

Written by Sarah | 2024-12-17

We recently had the pleasure of conducting an insightful interview with our partner, Crosser. In this discussion, Mikael Samuelsson, Director of Strategic Alliances & Partners at Crosser, shared valuable perspectives on the evolving data market and how our collaboration is driving innovation. Together, we explored how this partnership delivers additional value to our joint customers, empowering them to harness real-time analytics, automation, and seamless data integration to stay ahead in today’s competitive landscape.

Mikael, can you please describe Crosser’s core mission and how it aims to address current challenges in the industry?

[Mikael S.] Crosser’s mission is to empower organizations with intelligent, real-time data integration and processing across diverse environments. Our platform addresses industry challenges by enabling seamless, low-effort data integration pipelines that can run anywhere—edge, on-premises, or in the cloud—based on what makes the most sense for the organization.

One common challenge is that companies use way too many tools for different use cases which increases the complexity and the cost. Crosser is an All-in-One platform that allows customers to break up data siloes and address hundreds of different use cases along areas such as:

  • Unified Namespace. Implement a common data model across the entire organization.
  • Edge AI. Run AI and Machine Learning in distributed environments.
  • Shop floor integration. Integrate industrial and operational data with enterprise systems
  • Intelligent Data Pipelines. Build smart real-time automations and workflows with advanced business logic.
  • Cloud integration. Pre-processing of edge data and integration to any Cloud or SaaS.

What are the key advantages that Crosser brings to its clients and partners in terms of technology and innovation?

[Mikael S.] Crosser is a cutting-edge, real-time integration platform that enables users to build and deploy pipelines in minutes. Some of the appreciated advantages our customers and partners are talking about include:

  • Low Code. Simplified development for rapid deployment
  • Low Complexity. Engineers and Data teams are fully empowered to build advanced use cases without developers.
  • Low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Cost-efficient deployment and operation.
  • Low Footprint. Designed for lightweight, flexible deployments.
  • Low Latency and High Performance. Processes data in real-time with minimal delay and high throughput.
  • Fully Hybrid deployments. Fully supports any combination of edge, on-premise, and cloud environments.

Can you provide examples of successful implementations or case studies where Crosser delivered impressive results?

[Mikael S.] Yes, Blechwarenfabrik Limburg GmbH, a leading chemical-technical packaging producer, aimed to optimize production and palletizing through smart manufacturing. Their digital transformation required simplicity, flexibility, and agility, leading them to adopt Crosser’s low-code platform.

Their first use case involved speeding up data delivery for their palletizing server, which had been bottlenecked by legacy architecture. Crosser provided a reliable, flexible solution that simplified processes, reduced delays, and cut maintenance costs.

According to a key decision-maker:
"Simplicity was a strategic requirement, and Crosser delivered. The platform not only streamlined our processes but also made them more reliable and scalable."

The results speak for themselves - the time required and maintenance cost associated decreased significantly with Crosser’s centralized platform, offering easier versioning, management and orchestration, compared with their legacy solution. With Crosser’s reusable FlowApp templates, they replicated these improvements across multiple production lines, achieving significant efficiency gains.

How does the partnership with CrateDB enhance Crosser’s capabilities and offerings?

[Mikael S.] CrateDB’s distributed SQL database, optimized for real-time analytics and high volumes of time-series data, complements Crosser’s edge analytics capabilities. Our partnership provides scalable, high-performance storage and advanced querying, enabling efficient workflows for IoT and industrial data.

CrateDB enhances Crosser’s offerings by supporting real-time decision-making with low-latency queries and reducing cloud transfer costs through optimized data storage. Together, Crosser and CrateDB deliver a seamless edge-to-cloud solution that empowers businesses to analyze and act on data quickly and effectively.

Leveraging on Crosser’s capability to efficiently collect data from diverse sources, combined with CrateDB’s scalability and speed, it is possible to enrich real-time data with application insights and perform cost-effective, real-time analytics at scale.

What future developments or strategic initiatives can we expect from Crosser, especially in collaboration with CrateDB?

[Mikael S.] Edge AI is a use case that is trending strongly. Crosser already offers the ability to deploy and re-deploy trained models in distributed edge environments and one key strategic initiative is to enhance and improve this experience for our users. This will accelerate the ease-of-use of the whole Edge AI life-cycle and increase the success rate of advanced Edge AI use cases.

 

 

==
Thank you to Mikael Samuelsson and the Crosser team for an engaging conversation and for sharing valuable insights on how our partnership empowers businesses to thrive.