Cloud and On-Premise

Pathfinder is available in both Cloud and On-Premise Implementations. However, our On-Premise implementation has a higher minimum seat commitment requirement (twenty-five stations per site), reflecting our initial investment and maintenance costs. Moreover, in line with guidelines from leading manufacturing industry CIOs and latest technological trends, we find that a Cloud implementation is better suited for the majority of our customers. 

Why Choose Cloud?

Cloud computing offers numerous benefits over on-premise implementations in enterprise software deployments.

Here are a few reasons why manufacturing CIOs prefer cloud computing:

Scalability

Cloud computing offers businesses the ability to scale resources up or down based on demand. This means that businesses can quickly adjust to changing market conditions without having to worry about investing in additional hardware or software.

Cost savings

 Cloud computing eliminates the need for businesses to purchase and maintain their own hardware and software. This significantly reduces capital expenditures and ongoing maintenance costs, which can be a significant cost savings over time.

Accessibility

Cloud computing allows employees to access enterprise applications from anywhere, at any time, as long as they have an internet connection. This means that businesses can take advantage of a distributed workforce, allowing employees to work remotely, increasing productivity, and reducing commuting costs.

Security

Retrocausal leverages Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its cloud infrastructure which invests heavily in security measures to protect clients’ data. This includes measures such as encryption, firewalls, and regular security audits. Additionally, cloud providers can quickly patch vulnerabilities and upgrade security measures without disrupting the service.

Security

Retrocausal leverages Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its cloud infrastructure which invests heavily in security measures to protect clients’ data. This includes measures such as encryption, firewalls, and regular security audits. Additionally, cloud providers can quickly patch vulnerabilities and upgrade security measures without disrupting the service.

Business Continuity

Cloud providers offer robust disaster recovery and business continuity measures, including backups and redundancies. This ensures that businesses can quickly recover from any downtime, without experiencing significant disruptions to their operations.

"Manufacturing CIOs are generally fine with sending data over to the cloud. Many even prefer it. We already have our pricing data etc on SAP HANA (in the cloud). What is more valuable? Our pricing data or videos of a random sub-assembly or kitting process? Half of our corporation works in the cloud anyways."
CIO of a Leading Automotive Parts Manufacturer
"We typically dislike plants doing their custom IT stuff. Whereas cloud solutions give me the ability to centrally control access. Because when the local machine at an IT plant goes offline, I can’t help them… e.g. What’s the plant’s strategy for backup of data? Corporate IT knows how to do this stuff, and we prefer cloud."
CIO of a Leading Medical Devices Manufacturing

Pathfinder Cloud Implementation

Our standard Pathfinder implementations are hybrid installations split between Pathfinder Client application which runs on Windows computers running on the Edge, and Pathfinder Portal implemented on the Cloud. Pathfinder performs the bulk of computation at the edge, where live video is processed and operators are offered guidance in real-time. In contrast, Cloud is used for setting up and training machine learning models as well as hosting analytics, optional trace videos, ergonomics, and our LeanGPT models. All customer data whether in transmission or at rest is always protected using SHA-256 encryption algorithm. Pathfinder has its custom implementation of video compression optimized for industrial process videos which minimizes network usage, even if Trace video recording for each assembly cycle is turned on. Pathfinder also allows scheduling video transfer to low-use times.

Pathfinder On-Premise Implementation

Pathfinder can also be implemented in an On-Premise configuration for deployments which include more than 25 licenses per factory and stipulate the appropriate installation and support costs. In this configuration, Retrocausal Solutions Engineers meet with the IT team at the customer site to identify the appropriate infrastructure on which machine learning model training, web services and storage will be hosted locally. We also agree upon an appropriate schedule for version control and updates as well as any onsite support needs. Our On-Premise solution requires the factory IT team taking the bulk of responsibility for ensuring that their local servers remain online, with Retrocausal solutions team taking responsibility for any issues that may arise due to Pathfinder software itself.

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