Software Updates for a Connected World

Bosch IoT Rollouts—a cloud service in the Bosch IoT Suite—is a domain independent back-end solution for rolling out software updates to constrained edge devices as well as more powerful controllers and gateways connected to IP based networking infrastructure. Devices can connect to the Rollouts server either directly through an optimised interface or indirectly through federated device management servers.

  • Focused on software updates in IoT context.
  • Designed from the beginning as a Cloud service with a focus on scalability, security, integrity and cost efficiency.
  • Various device integration options with open interfaces.
  • Flexible data model that fits to every IoT use case.
  • Support for IoT application integration.
  • Based on open source and fully API compatible to Eclipse hawkBit™

Components

Bosch IoT Rollouts
  • A device and software repository.
  • Artifact content delivery.
  • Software update and campaign/rollout management.
  • Reporting and monitoring.
  • Device integration interfaces provided for:
    • direct device integration.
    • custom device connectivity federation (i.e. indirect device integration).
  • Management interfaces:
    • for IoT solutions or applications to manage the repository and the rollouts.
    • and a user interface to operators to manage and run the rollouts.

Use cases

  • Direct software update
    • Provisioning fully managed by Rollouts server.
    • Direct device integration possible, i.e. no extra device management required.
    • Rule based AutoAssign to provision newly registered devices with up-to-date software, i.e. plug-and-play.
    • Scenarios:
      • Direct deployment through the user interface (i.e. “drag and drop” provisioning).
      • External rollout management by an application, i.e. Rollouts executes, application manages.
  • Large scale rollout/campaign management
    • For larger use cases it is important to apply software updates through a managed rollout flow. The use case requires:
      • The definition of groups of provisioning targets.
      • The time or trigger based bulk assignment of updates to each group.
      • The detailed logistics of a planned rollout.
  • Reporting, audit logging & rollout monitoring
    • What is currently assigned to what?
    • How has the penetration rate of a update changed over time.
    • What has been changed by whom in the past?

Examples

Bosch IoT Rollouts

  • Vehicle update:
    • Support for Campaign/Rollout management on global scale.
    • Support for “App-Store” scenarios.
    • Over the Air capabilities.
    • Large binary support (e.g. map downloads).
  • IoT Gateway update:
    • Support for all in one packages or structured packages for delta updates.
    • Customer interaction for update approval.
  • Connected Sensor update:
    • CoAP blockwise transfer for artifact delivery.

Domain independent

Bosch IoT Rollouts is device and communication channel neutral by means of supporting:

  • Software and operating system updates for IoT gateways (typically but not necessarily running Linux) and
  • Firmware updates for embedded devices

both for

  • cable or
  • over the air (OTA) connected devices

Rollouts is designed, build and run as a service in the Bosch IoT Cloud with a focus on scalability, security, integrity and cost efficiency.

Bosch IoT Rollouts