A new lifecycle management solution provides a secure and flexible way for operators to deploy and manage services on their router stack.
Consult Red’s Lifecycle Management (LCM) and Downloadable Application Container (DAC) functionality provide a secure, fast and flexible solution to remotely deploy and manage native applications and services on a router stack.
Containerised applications and services can either run independently or communicate to other RDK-B components at runtime via direct integration to the RDK-B message bus (RBUS), leveraging RDK messaging and eventing.
This enables operators to remotely deploy and manage the life cycle of individual containerised applications and services, while also reducing the need for the monolithic system image updates that are required on equivalent devices today.
LCM and DAC allows operators to customise their offering in the field, allowing for a variety of deployed services that can evolve over time. As an example, the device user interface can be managed as a modular software component with localised or customised versions deployed and initialised via DAC. These devices could then further evolve to add a UI for a Matter gateway once that service is ready and without the need to deploy a new system image. Because the use of LCM and DAC allows for these changes to be rolled out in the field without the need to build and roll out a new device system image, the overall development effort and time to market for adding new features is considerably reduced.
“The LCM solution that Consult Red developed for RDK-B, including reference integration, and supporting documentation, has been made available as open source to the RDK community,” said Rahul Mehra, chief technology officer, Consult Red. “Our work in this area is ongoing. We continue to develop data model compatibility and extensions, feature set enhancements, and integrations.”
The development and the contribution of LCM and DAC for RDK-B by Consult Red enables operators to get to market quicker with a platform for agility and growth. It positions the smart router as a flexible and future-proof device. Consult Red has a long track record in connected and embedded expertise to meet market demand for IoT smart devices.
“Consult Red continue to play a leading role in the ongoing development of RDK,” said Jason Briggs, president and general manager of RDK. “The recent development of Downloadable Application Containers for RDK-B is already available for the entire community to build upon. As a member of RTAB, Their contributions will continue to help operators and the wider RDK community develop smart, immersive and engaging products for their customers.”
