CTG Helped CellGate Accelerate Growth with App Modernization

CellGate is a leading manufacturer of remote gate access control systems, catering to a diverse clientele, including single-family homes, multi-tenant buildings, office/commercial properties, farms/ranches/hunting leases, oil/gas properties, and self-storage facilities. Headquartered in Texas, CellGate’s advanced access control and monitoring systems enable property owners to monitor entry and exit points, maintaining detailed records of every entrance, including videos and photographs. Their cellular access control devices connect to nearly all manual and automatic gates and control panels, offering a wide range of security products.

The Challenge and Opportunity

1. Developing a Scalable and Secure Platform: Our client required a highly secure platform to host cloud-native, modernized applications and infrastructure that can scale with business growth and adapt to the needs of their partner ecosystem. This ecosystem includes, but is not limited to, carrier networks, MVNOs, service providers, devices, and protocols.
2. Adapting the Platform to Provide Predictive Insights: Our client faced the challenge of efficiently monitoring devices and networks while extracting actionable insights to optimize performance. They needed a platform that delivered insights in real time.

The Solution and Results

Problem: Building a scalable platform capable of supporting business growth
Solution: Hybrid Cloud Native Platform

To meet the customer's needs, CTG migrated data, applications, and network infrastructure from Rackspace to Azure. The applications were refactored and modernized into cloud-native microservices, leveraging Azure’s PaaS, SaaS, and DevSecOps services. A robust, multi-region infrastructure was implemented to ensure high availability in the event of a disaster. Additionally, multi-cloud SaaS services were utilized across Azure Edge Network and AWS LoRaWAN, providing connectivity, security, low-latency processing, and scalability for access control devices.

Benefits:

• Scalable, secure, and highly available modernized ecosystem
• Cloud-native applications and infrastructure that scale with business growth
• Flexibility to adapt to the partner ecosystem, including carrier networks, MVNOs, service providers, devices, and protocols
• Enhanced customer experience

Problem: Development of Analytics for Network & Cost Optimization
Solution: Modern Analytics Platform Powered by Microsoft Fabric

We designed and implemented a medallion data architecture using Microsoft Fabric to handle data storage, processing, machine learning, and data visualization. This platform enables the ecosystem to offer Data as a Service (DaaS), ensuring a single source of truth from various data sources such as Salesforce, Sage, cloud platforms, and carrier infrastructure. The architecture is built on One Lake, which integrates and unifies these data sources. For bandwidth monitoring, we implemented an AI-powered solution to track user activity in detail.

Benefits:

• Optimized Network & Costs: Based on insights from device usage and carrier network data, helping reduce costs and improve network efficiency.
• Better Customer Experience: Diagnostic metrics from devices and networks provide actionable recommendations for optimal device configurations.
• Boosted Sales: Market trend analysis predicts inventory needs based on different device variants, improving sales performance.

Following the implementation of CTG’s tailored solutions, CellGate experienced significant improvements in their operations:

• Increased Accuracy: The AI-powered user activity tracking ensured precise data usage monitoring, leading to accurate billing and better customer relationships.
  Enhanced Security & Scalability: Migrating to Microsoft Azure provided CellGate with a more secure and scalable data infrastructure, setting the stage for future growth.

The partnership between CTG and the client was transformative, addressing key challenges through app modernization and enhancing operational efficiency, security, and customer satisfaction. With these advancements, CellGate is well-positioned to maintain its leadership in the remote gate access control systems market, delivering top-quality security solutions to a diverse clientele.