Scalable Microservices Architecture Enhancement for IoT Data Analytics Platform

The client operates a legacy IoT platform with over 10 years of operation, supporting approximately 1 million users globally. They face difficulties in delivering new features efficiently, experiencing UI performance issues, and maintaining system stability. Security, privacy, and uptime are critical due to the scale of their user base, and the existing monolithic architecture introduces complexity, dependencies, and performance bottlenecks that hinder rapid development and deployment.

A mid to large-sized IoT platform provider specializing in sensor-based data analytics for agriculture, serving a global customer base of farmers and agricultural professionals.

• Reorganize and modularize existing API endpoints and business logic to improve maintainability and scalability.
• Optimize system performance, aiming for at least a 13x increase in UI responsiveness and the ability to display over 1 million objects seamlessly.
• Upgrade underlying database and framework technologies to latest versions, ensuring compatibility and security.
• Implement microservices architecture gradually to enhance system stability, reliability, and ease of future maintenance.
• Enhance security measures to protect against threats such as code injections and credential mishandling.
• Improve local deployment procedures to reduce maintenance effort and enable quicker updates.
• Validate system integrity and performance through comprehensive end-to-end testing and monitoring.
• Establish real-time notification capabilities using message streaming technologies for end-user alerts and data updates.

• Modular API endpoint architecture that consolidates logic for user preferences, sensors, and fields within unified modules.
• A streamlined front-end interface with isolated data layers for access control, data structuring, and storage.
• Performance optimization of data retrieval processes, reducing latency for live maps and graphs.
• Upgrade of database systems from MySQL v5.7 to v8.0 and framework from Spring Boot v2 to v3, aligning with latest standards.
• Incorporation of OAuth 2.0 and JWT authentication for robust authorization and security.
• Deployment of Apache Kafka or similar messaging platform for real-time notifications and system messaging.
• Enhanced exception handling, security protections against injections, and comprehensive integration tests.
• Optimized deployment procedures to simplify system updates and reduce operational overhead.

• Sensor data ingestion APIs
• Authentication and identity management services
• Messaging infrastructure for real-time notifications
• Monitoring and logging tools

• System must support at least 1 million concurrent users with high uptime and minimal latency.
• API response times optimized to reduce data retrieval latency, achieving up to 13x UI performance improvements.
• Security measures to prevent code injection, credential theft, and data breaches.
• System should be scalable, flexible, and easily maintainable following microservices principles.
• Deployment effort should be minimized, enabling quick rollout of updates and features.

The modernization aims to significantly improve system maintainability, stability, and performance. It is expected to enable the platform to handle over 1 million users efficiently, with faster data visualization and real-time updates. The improvements will facilitate quicker deployment of new features, enhance security, and support scalable growth, thereby empowering a large global user base of farmers with timely, accurate analytics and notifications.