OEM Digital Services

A guide for machine manufacturers who want to deliver and manage digital services alongside their machines.

Machine manufacturers increasingly need to offer digital services — monitoring, analytics, predictive maintenance, remote diagnostics — together with their physical products. The challenge is doing this at scale across dozens or hundreds of customer sites, each with different network constraints and maintenance schedules.

IronFlock provides a unified workflow for this: develop your digital service once, deploy it to every customer via a turnkey appliance, monetize it through built-in billing, and maintain it over time with a controlled update process — all while leaving the customer in full control of their local infrastructure.

Step 1: Develop Your Digital Service

Every digital service you offer to your customers is packaged as an IronFlock app. An app bundles everything into a single deployable unit:

• Edge software running on the device (any language, containerized)
• A dashboard for operators to visualize data and interact with machines
• A data schema defining what telemetry to collect and store
• Configurable parameters that can be adjusted per customer or per machine
• Optional remote access tunnels and AI integrations

You develop the app once in the IronFlock cloud IDE, test it against a development device, and release it to the App Store. The same app can then be deployed to all your customers.

For the full development workflow, see IoT App Development.

Step 2: Deploy via Appliance

To deliver your digital service to a customer, you ship an IronFlock Appliance alongside the machine. The Appliance is a pre-configured, self-contained box that runs the complete IronFlock platform — no cloud connection, no DMZ, no Kubernetes cluster required. The customer plugs it into the local network, and it works.

How Delivery Works

1. You choose the hardware (typically a medium industrial edge PC — 4 cores, 8 GB RAM is sufficient)
2. IronFlock pre-configures the software stack on the hardware
3. You ship the Appliance with the machine to the customer site
4. The customer connects the Appliance to their local network — no IT involvement needed
5. The Appliance goes online briefly to sync your app from the IronFlock online App Store using a Store Access Key, then operates fully offline

Scaling to Larger Installations

The Appliance itself can act as both the platform server and an edge device. For larger installations — for example, a customer managing 80 CNC machines across a factory floor — additional edge PCs can be connected to the Appliance to extend coverage. These additional devices are managed centrally from the Appliance, just like any other IronFlock edge device.

For details on the Appliance architecture, app syncing, and other deployment models, see Deployment Options.

Step 3: Monetize Your Services

IronFlock includes built-in billing infrastructure so you can charge customers for the digital services you deliver. You don’t need to build your own licensing or metering system.

• Publish your app via private sharing (direct to specific customers, 10% service fee) or publicly in the App Store (20% service fee)
• Set pricing with flexible billing periods (monthly, yearly, one-time) and volume rebates for customers running many machines
• Automatic metering and invoicing — IronFlock tracks usage, generates invoices, and collects payments through Stripe

For the full monetization workflow including product setup, pricing configuration, and payout details, see App Monetization.

Step 4: Manage Your Digital Services Lifecycle

Once your customers are running your apps on their Appliances, you can continue to improve and expand your digital services over time. The update and delivery process works as follows:

1. You release a new app version — or publish an entirely new digital service — in the IronFlock online App Store
2. Your customers are notified by email that an update or new service is available
3. The customer connects the Appliance to the internet briefly and pulls the new version (or new app) into their local App Store on the Appliance
4. The customer deploys the update to their machines during a maintenance window of their choosing

This model ensures that the customer is always in control of the Appliance. You publish updates and new services; each customer decides independently when to apply them to their machines.

For details on app installation, updates, and device management, see App Management.

Putting It All Together

Consider a packaging machine manufacturer serving 50 factories worldwide. They develop a monitoring app in the IronFlock cloud IDE, release it to the App Store, and ship an Appliance with every machine. Each factory plugs in the Appliance, syncs the app once, and runs it locally — fully offline. When the manufacturer releases a predictive maintenance add-on six months later, each factory syncs the new app at their convenience and deploys it during their next scheduled downtime. Billing is handled automatically by IronFlock.

Four steps — develop, deploy, monetize, maintain — and your digital services scale with your machines.