Out of IoT, IIoT, or the Industrial Internet of Things, is emerging as a common and necessary term. This guide provides insight into IIoT and into DMC’s process for completing successful IIoT projects.

Table of Contents

• IIoT Overview
• Our Five-Step Process
• Step One: Field Device Platform Selection
• Step Two: Determine Communications
• Step Three: Determine Cloud Platform
• Step Four: Web Application Development
• Step Five: Go Live and Maintenance

IIoT Overview

Much like IoT, IIoT uses sensors and other technology but in an industrial setting to leverage real-time data to monitor and control devices in the field and communicate and display that data in a way that allows for better decision making in industrial processes.

Our Five-Step Process

DMC has completed hundreds of projects incorporating a wide range of solutions. Through experience, our engineers have developed a process for implementing IIoT solutions. We begin by starting at the lowest level and then fill in the gaps, going up the stack.

Step One: Field Device Platform Selection

Getting reliable, accurate data from the physical system is the primary challenge for any system design and the most important decision you can make. Once you secure the data, you can do anything you want with it. Answer the following questions to select hardware used in the field:

• What are you trying to measure or control?
• What does the device in the field need to be able to do on its own? How complex?
• How many devices do you anticipate on deploying?
• Are you the end-user and maintainer of this equipment, or are you selling a solution (operated and maintained by others)?
• What does new device provisioning look like? (the ideal process)
• How will this device be powered?

Keep in mind, the software platform is determined by hardware selection. For example, when you pick a particular PLC, you have to use the manufacturer’s software to program it. For an embedded device this will be C++, etc.

Device Hardware: Selecting the Right Parts

Let’s say the average PLC costs $1,000, so every time you put one out in the field, that is another $1,000 of hard costs. PLCs are great for some things while NI has developed expert tech for other uses. DMC engineers can leverage experience from hundreds of completed projects to advise on making the best choice for each project.

0-10 Devices – Small Deployments

10-100 Devices – Larger Deployment, off the shelf products, but start to have cost-optimized decisions

100-1000+ Devices – Discuss an embedded solution because the hardware starts to get expensive

Step Two: Determine Communications

After determining your device platform, deciding how your networking devices are configured is key. Consistent communication between devices is essential. DMC’s engineers help scope what needs to be done. Consider the following:

• How are you going to communicate with devices?
• Where is the internet coming from?
  • Cellular, Wi-Fi, from the plant?
• What happens when the internet is not available?
  • Local caching, buffer and retry, operational impacts
• What are the protocol security requirements?
  • Encryptions, certificates, secure comm management

Step Three: Determine Cloud Platform

There are a lot of cloud platforms to choose from when you reach this phase of the process. Ask yourself, what out of the box services (provided by these hosting entities) will your application need/or take advantage of? Some cloud platforms include Azure, AWS, and Google.

This phase is when we need to assess how to save on custom development, and where it’s possible to use solid foundational pieces already developed for these types of applications. Ask yourself:

• Do you need a website?
• Do you need database(s)?
• Do you need user management?
• Do you need integrations to other cloud services?
• Do you need SMS, e-Mail, or other mass notification capabilities?
• Do you need an AI engine or advanced analytics support?
• Do you need a flexible reporting framework (points to things like PowerBI)?
• What type of data store is needed?
  • How much data?
  • How often will it be sampled?
  • How will the data be used?
• Where and how will security be enforced for cloud resources?
• How many monthly active users do you anticipate on this cloud application?
• What in house cloud/web development resources do you have?
  • What are they comfortable with and willing to maintain?

Step Four: Web Application Development

DMC’s full-stack development team builds custom web applications with intuitive interfaces designed for usability and stable back ends designed for scalability. 

Consider the following during this step:

• Define the UI/UX experience
• How are you going to onboard new users?
• How are you going to onboard new devices?
• How are you going to manage devices?
• How are users going to view data?
• What access restrictions should apply? (user levels)
• What types of notification and alerts are required?
• When should devices be alerted to changes?
• What visualizations for data or information are required?
• What type of reporting is required? How are users notified of reports?
• Is a native Mobile App also required?
• Is a generic API (accessible by third parties) required?
• Define support plan for end-users of the application

Step Five: Go Live and Maintenance

• Are you using continuous Integration tools in Development, Staging, and Production environments?
• Do you have planned downtime for production-level updates?
• Are database migrations required? Data integrity checks?
• Deploy and active service health monitors?
• Are support and service avenues (emails/phone) active and being monitored?

Industry Credentials

DMC holds several key industry credentials with leading technology providers.

View all partners

Our Work

The post A Complete Guide to Planning Your IIoT Solution appeared first on DMC, Inc..

Natural Language Processing (NLP) refers to artificial intelligence that can see, hear, speak with, and understand users. Models with NLP can be applied to input such as text, audio, and real-time speech. With Azure AI’s Language service, we can enable applications to understand us in dynamic ways.

At DMC, we pride ourselves on our vast skill set. AI solutions are just a small part of our application development services. From IoT solutions to custom software from scratch, we are more than ready to tackle any project that comes our way. In this post, we’ll explore the fundamentals of Azure AI’s NLP, dive into key features like text analysis, question answering, and conversational language understanding, and showcase how DMC can craft tailored NLP solutions to meet your business needs.

What is Natural Language Processing?

Natural Language Processing empowers computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language in a way that’s both intuitive and contextually accurate. Azure AI’s NLP suite enables businesses to process vast amounts of text, extract actionable insights, and create intelligent applications that enhance customer interactions and streamline operations.

Building robust NLP models from scratch is complex, requiring extensive training and computational resources. Azure AI simplifies this process with pre-trained models that deliver high performance out of the box. At DMC, we customize these models to fit your specific requirements, making it easy to integrate NLP into your applications. By provisioning an Azure AI Language resource in your Azure Subscription, you can manage and fine-tune your NLP solution effortlessly through the Azure Portal.

What Can Azure AI’s Language Service Do?

Azure AI’s Language Service offers a range of powerful capabilities, including:

1. Text Analysis: Extracting sentiment, key phrases, entities, and language from text.
2. Question Answering: Providing precise answers to user queries based on documents or knowledge bases.
3. Conversational Language Understanding: Interpreting user intents and entities for intelligent chatbots.

Let’s explore these three core NLP capabilities in detail:

1. Text Analysis

Text analysis enables systems to extract meaningful insights from unstructured text, such as customer feedback, social media posts, or documents.

How Text Analysis Works

Azure’s Text Analytics API processes text inputs using advanced machine learning models to perform tasks like:

• Sentiment Analysis: Determining whether text expresses positive, negative, or neutral sentiment.
• Key Phrase Extraction: Identifying the main ideas or topics in a text.
• Entity Recognition: Detecting people, places, organizations, or other entities.
• Language Detection: Identifying the language of the text, supporting multiple languages.

The API handles complex scenarios, such as noisy or ambiguous text, and delivers structured JSON outputs for easy integration into applications.

Use Cases for Text Analysis

• Customer Insights: Analyzing reviews to understand customer sentiment and identify product issues.
• Content Moderation: Filtering inappropriate comments on social platforms.
• Market Intelligence: Extracting trends from survey responses to guide business strategy.

With AI Text Analysis, we can use text analysis to build solutions that transform raw text into actionable insights that help businesses get the most out of their knowledge base.

2. Question Answering

Question answering allows systems to provide accurate, context-aware responses to user queries based on documents or custom knowledge bases.

How Question Answering Works

Azure’s question answering capabilities involve using deep learning models to comprehend questions and extract answers from structured or unstructured data. Key steps include:

• Context Understanding: Analyzing the query and source content to identify relevant information.
• Answer Retrieval: Extracting precise answers, often with confidence scores.
• Knowledge Base Integration: Supporting custom datasets, such as company manuals or FAQs.

In short, a question answering system involves integrating with existing AI models, such as gpt-4o, to create a more “human-like” interface with your knowledge base. Later, we will explore a more in-depth example of a system built by DMC that does this.

Use Cases for Question Answering

• Customer Support: Chatbots answer FAQs, reducing support ticket volumes.
• Employee Productivity: Staff can access instant answers from internal documentation.
• Education: E-learning platforms provide students with responses to their questions based on course materials.

DMC excels at building question-answering solutions that enhance efficiency and user experience, customized to your organization’s unique data and workflows.

3. Conversational Language Understanding

Conversational Language Understanding (CLU) powers intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants by interpreting user intents and extracting entities from natural language inputs.

How Conversation Language Understanding Works

Azure’s CLU service analyzes conversational inputs to:

• Intent Classification: Identify the user’s goal, such as booking a service or requesting information.
• Entity Extraction: Recognize specific details, like dates, locations, or product names.
• Multi-Turn Conversations: Maintain context across multiple exchanges for seamless interactions.

Use Cases for Conversational Language Understanding

• Retail: Chatbots assist with product searches, order tracking, or returns.
• Healthcare: Patients schedule appointments or access medical advice via conversational bots.
• Smart Devices: Voice assistants process commands to control IoT devices.

DMC’s knowledge of CLU allows us to create conversational AI solutions that feel natural and intuitive, driving more impactful engagement with users in contrast to traditional solutions.

Real-World Solution: DMC AI Chatbot

To demonstrate the power of Azure AI NLP, let’s walk through an AI Chatbot solution that was implemented in-house here at DMC.

The Challenge

DMC has a large and complex knowledge base that has been accumulated over our 20+ years of experience. We face two problems with this:

• Finding answers in this knowledge base can take time for those unfamiliar with its structure.
• A common practice is to reach out to large groups in Slack to ask common questions which results in:
  • Downtime between the question being asked and it being answered.
  • Pulling employees from higher priority tasks to answer previously answered questions.

The Solution

DMC was able to propose and execute a solution that includes:

• Knowledge Base Integration: Using Azure resources, we were able to take our existing knowledge base and transform it into a structure that is retrievable by our chatbot.
• Custom AI Chatbot: Azure can provide a pre-built AI model that we were able to customize to our exact needs by adjusting prompts, choosing its personality, and providing it with DMC-specific terms for better comprehension. The chatbot is able to take a user’s question, answer it with the existing documentation, and even provide the direct source that it retrieved the information from!
• Slack Integration: Our chatbot is accessible in Slack, our primary workplace communication platform, making it easy to use for our existing employees, with little to no guidance on getting started.

Implementation

To build this solution, we utilized our Azure subscription to provision the necessary resources and integrate them with available APIs to fully integrate them into our workplace. This required us to do the following:

• Instantiate an Azure Search Service: For our chatbot to become an expert on DMC, we had to provision an Azure Search Service. This service takes our existing knowledge base in Confluence and transforms it into a searchable format by indexing every piece of information available. This required hitting the API to our Confluence instance.
• Provide Chatbot with the Knowledge Base: Hooking up our chatbot to our search service allows it to submit keyword-based queries and choose results that best answer a question asked by a DMC employee.
• Customizing the Chatbot: To limit unpredictable behavior, we needed to clearly define the process for handling unclear questions and multiple questions in one prompt. We also provided the chatbot with definitions for common acronyms and terms used exclusively at DMC to enhance its comprehension skills.
• Integrate with Existing Resources: DMC employees use Slack daily, so it was essential that we integrate our new chatbot with it. This makes the chatbot easily accessible to our employees.
• Keep the Chatbot Informed: Our knowledge and documentation are constantly expanding, which means we must keep our chatbot up to date. This meant that we needed to implement a function that is run once per week to help our chatbot keep up!

Benefits

This solution helped solve the issues shown earlier:

• Quick Knowledge Retrieval: With the new chatbot, users can ask questions and get instant feedback, without having to search Confluence manually.
• Reduced Downtime: With instant feedback, employees experience less downtime before getting answers.
• Manage Employee Priorities: Employees can spend less time asking and answering previously answered questions, which translates into more time available for higher-priority tasks.

Ethical Considerations

Deploying NLP solutions requires responsible practices to address privacy, bias, and transparency. At DMC, we ensure ethical AI use by considering the following:

• Bias Mitigation: Regularly auditing models to prevent unfair treatment across diverse customer groups.
• Data Privacy: Implementing end-to-end encryption and anonymizing data in compliance with GDPR and other regulations.
• Transparency: Clearly informing customers when they interact with AI chatbots.
• Human Oversight: Incorporating human-in-the-loop review for complex queries or sensitive interactions.

As a Microsoft partner, DMC adheres to Microsoft’s responsible AI guidelines, ensuring our NLP solutions are ethical and trustworthy. More details on Microsoft’s guidelines can be found in their documentation here.

Why DMC?

At DMC, we blend our technical expertise with a deep understanding of your business goals. Our experience with Azure AI’s NLP enables us to deliver customized solutions that drive efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and unlock new opportunities. From retail to healthcare, we’re equipped to tackle complex challenges across industries.

Let’s Recap

Azure AI’s NLP capabilities—text analysis, question answering, and conversational language understanding—offer endless possibilities for innovation. At DMC, we’re more focused on harnessing these tools to build tailored solutions that solve your unique challenges.

The post Azure AI: Natural Language Processing Solutions appeared first on DMC, Inc..

At DMC, we pride ourselves on our technical skillset. AI solutions are just a part of our application development services. From IoT solutions to custom software from scratch, we are ready to tackle any project that comes our way. In this post, we will introduce the fundamentals of Azure AI Vision, facial recognition, and optical character recognition. We will also talk about what an AI Vision solution might look like from DMC. 

What is Azure AI Vision? 

Creating solutions that can “see” the world and interpret it is a core area of artificial intelligence. Computers don’t exactly have eyes, but they are capable of processing info from videos, images, or live camera feeds. 

The architecture for computer vision models is complex and requires significant amounts of training and resources to perform at a high level, i.e. identify objects correctly with confidence. With Azure AI Vision, we can create complex models much quicker and easier than producing one from scratch. While these existing models can be functional out of the box, we can build on top of them to create custom models that fit your exact needs! 

Using these models can be done with ease by provisioning an Azure AI Vision resource in an Azure Subscription, which allows us to use the Azure Portal to easily manage and modify your AI solution. 

What Can Azure AI Vision Do? 

Azure AI Vision offers several image analysis capabilities which include: 

• Extracting text from images using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) 
• Generating captions and descriptions of images 
• Common object detection 
• Tagging visual features 
• Detecting and recognizing faces 

Let’s dive deeper into these capabilities, starting with the ones that fall under facial recognition. 

Facial Recognition 

Facial recognition is one of the most powerful capabilities of Azure AI Vision, enabling systems to detect, analyze, and identify human faces in images or video feeds. This technology has a wide range of applications, from enhancing security systems to personalizing user experiences. Azure AI Vision provides robust facial recognition tools that are both accurate and easy to integrate into custom solutions. 

How Facial Recognition Works 

Azure’s facial recognition capabilities rely on sophisticated machine learning models that analyze facial features in images or video frames. These models detect faces by identifying key landmarks, such as the eyes, nose, and mouth, and then generate a unique facial signature based on these features. The process involves several key steps that ascend in complexity: 

• Face Detection: Identifies the presence of faces in an image or video and determines their locations within the input
• Facial Attribute Analysis: Extracts attributes like age, gender, facial hair, or even emotional expressions (e.g., happy, sad, neutral)
• Face Identification: Matches detected faces against a database of known faces to identify individuals to a known group
• Face Verification: Confirms whether two faces belong to the same person by comparing their facial signatures

Azure AI Vision’s facial recognition APIs make it simple to integrate these capabilities into applications. The service also supports real-time analysis, making it ideal for applications like live surveillance or interactive kiosks. 

Use Cases for Facial Recognition

Facial recognition opens a variety of possibilities for businesses and organizations. Some potential use cases include: 

• Security and Access Control: Implementing facial recognition for secure building access or device unlocking, replacing traditional keycards or passwords
• Retail and Marketing: Analyzing customer demographics and emotions in stores to tailor marketing campaigns or improve customer experience
• Event Management: Streamlining check-in processes at events by identifying attendees through facial recognition

At DMC, we are confident in our ability to leverage Azure’s facial recognition capabilities to build tailored solutions for clients across industries. Whether it’s enhancing security protocols or creating personalized customer interactions, our team is equipped to fine-tune these models to meet specific requirements while ensuring high accuracy and reliability. 

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) 

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is another cornerstone of Azure AI Vision, enabling systems to extract text from images, scanned documents, or video feeds. This capability is designed for digitizing physical documents, automating data entry, and making content searchable. Azure’s OCR technology is highly accurate and supports a wide range of languages and formats, making it a versatile tool for our clients. 

How OCR Works 

Azure’s OCR functionality, powered by the Read API, processes images or PDFs and converts text within them into machine-readable data. The process involves: 

• Text Detection: Identifying regions in an image that contain text, regardless of orientation or font style
• Text Recognition: Converting detected text into digital characters, preserving formatting where possible
• Language Support: Recognizing text in multiple languages, including handwritten and printed text
• Layout Analysis: Understanding the structure of the document, such as paragraphs, tables, or lists, to maintain context 

The Read API is designed to handle complex scenarios, such as noisy images, low-resolution scans, or text in mixed languages. Developers can easily integrate OCR into applications by calling the API and receiving structured JSON output containing the extracted text and its coordinates. 

Advanced OCR Features 

Azure AI Vision’s OCR goes beyond basic text extraction. Some advanced features include: 

• Handwritten Text Recognition: Extracting text from handwritten notes or forms, which is particularly useful for industries like healthcare or education
• Form Recognition: Automatically extracting key-value pairs from structured documents like invoices, receipts, or IDs 
• Multi-Page Document Processing: Handling large documents, such as contracts or reports, with consistent accuracy across pages
• Real-Time OCR: Processing live camera feeds to extract text instantly, ideal for applications like license plate recognition

Use Cases for OCR 

OCR is a game-changer for organizations looking to streamline operations and reduce manual work. Some practical applications include: 

• Document Digitization: Converting paper-based records, such as medical charts or legal contracts, into searchable digital formats
• Automated Data Entry: Extracting information from invoices, receipts, or forms to populate databases without human intervention
• Accessibility: Enabling text-to-speech systems to read printed text aloud for visually impaired users
• Logistics and Transportation: Reading shipping labels or license plates in real time to improve supply chain efficiency

Real-World Solution: Enhancing Security with Azure AI Vision

To illustrate the power of Azure AI Vision, let’s explore a high-level example of how DMC could leverage this technology to solve a security problem for a client. 

The Challenge

A large corporate campus with multiple buildings wants to enhance its security measures and streamline access control. The client faces two key issues: 

1. Unauthorized Access: The current keycard-based system is vulnerable to lost or stolen cards, allowing potential unauthorized entry to sensitive areas. 
2. Incident Reporting: Manual logging of security incidents, such as identifying individuals in surveillance footage, is time-consuming and prone to errors. 

The Solution

DMC proposes a comprehensive Azure AI Vision solution that combines facial recognition, OCR, and object detection to address these security challenges. The solution includes: 

Secure Access Control: Using Azure’s Face API, the system verifies employee identities at entry points by matching their faces against a secure database of authorized personnel. The system operates in real time, granting or denying access within seconds. 

Automated Incident Logging: Azure’s OCR capabilities are integrated into a security management platform that processes surveillance footage and incident reports. The system extracts text from identification documents or name badges captured in footage, cross-referencing with employee records to log incidents accurately. Object detection identifies potential security threats, such as unrecognized items in restricted areas. 

Security Analytics Dashboard: A centralized dashboard provides real-time insights into access logs and incident reports, powered by Azure’s facial recognition and OCR data. Security teams can monitor entry patterns, flag suspicious activities, and generate reports for compliance audits. 

Implementation

To build this solution, DMC provisions an Azure AI Vision resource within the client’s Azure Subscription. The development process includes: 

• Custom Model Training: Fine-tuning Azure’s facial recognition models with a dataset of employee images (with consent) to ensure high accuracy in identification under various lighting and angle conditions
• OCR Integration: Configuring the Read API to extract text from identification documents, badges, or signage in surveillance footage, supporting multiple formats and orientations
• Object Detection: Training a custom object detection model to recognize specific items (e.g., bags, devices) that may pose security risks
• Security Platform Development: Building a web or desktop platform that integrates the Face API, Read API, and object detection models, with a user-friendly interface for security personnel
• Security and Compliance: Implementing end-to-end encryption for all data, including facial signatures and extracted text, and ensuring compliance with privacy regulations according to state and federal guidelines. Human-in-the-loop oversight is incorporated, allowing security staff to review and intervene in real-time decisions.

Benefits 

The solution delivers measurable results for the corporate client: 

• Enhanced Security: Facial recognition ensures only authorized personnel access restricted areas, minimizing risks from lost or stolen keycards. 
• Operational Efficiency: Automated incident logging reduces manual work and improves the accuracy of security reports. 
• Proactive Monitoring: Real-time analytics enable security teams to detect and respond to potential threats quickly. 
• Scalability: The Azure-based solution can be expanded to additional campus locations or integrated with other security systems. 

Ethical Considerations 

While facial recognition and image analysis is a powerful tool, it’s important to address ethical considerations. Privacy, consent, and data security are critical when deploying these solutions. Azure AI Vision adheres to strict compliance standards, and at DMC, we prioritize responsible AI practices, ensuring that facial recognition systems are implemented transparently and with user consent. As a registered partner with Microsoft, we are committed to responsible AI practices in deploying both facial recognition and OCR solutions in accordance with their general guidelines.  

We ensure responsible use and integration of visual AI solutions by: 

• Thoroughly assessing Azure AI Vision’s capabilities to ensure they align with client needs, while performing sufficient testing to understand its capabilities and limitations
• Respecting individuals’ privacy by collecting data only with explicit consent and using it solely for authorized purposes
• Incorporating human-in-the-loop oversight to enable real-time intervention, maintaining human decision-making to prevent harm
• Prioritizing security through robust controls to protect data integrity and prevent unauthorized access

More information on Microsoft’s guidelines on responsible used of AI Image Analysis can be found in their documentation provided. 

Why DMC?

At DMC, we combine technical expertise with a deep understanding of our clients’ business needs. Our experience with Azure AI Vision allows us to deliver tailored solutions that drive real value. Whether it’s enhancing customer experiences, automating processes, or unlocking new insights, we’re ready to help our clients succeed. 

Let’s Recap

Azure AI Vision is a transformative technology that empowers businesses to “see” and understand the world in new ways. With capabilities like facial recognition and OCR, it opens endless possibilities for innovation. At DMC, we’re passionate about harnessing these tools to solve complex challenges and deliver measurable results. From automation to agriculture, our team is equipped to build custom AI solutions across industries that meet your unique needs.

The post Azure AI: Computer Vision Solutions appeared first on DMC, Inc..

At DMC, we pride ourselves on our vast technology skillset. AI solutions are just a part of our application development services. From IoT solutions to custom software from scratch, we are ready to tackle any project that comes our way. In this post, we will introduce the fundamentals of Azure AI Search, AI Enrichment, and Multimodal Search. We will also talk about what an AI Search solution might look like from DMC. 

What is Azure AI Search? 

Azure AI Search is a Microsoft-owned and managed, cloud-based service that enables applications to have enterprise-grade information retrieval. The service has the traditional characteristics of a search service, such as indexing, keyword search, and knowledge stores. However, Azure AI search can enhance your search capabilities using AI Enrichment, Multimodal Search, and more! All these features live in the Azure ecosystem, making it easy to scale and apply a secure solution that fits your needs. 

What Can Azure AI Search Do? 

Azure AI offers several standard features of a search service, with the addition of AI capabilities. In this article, we will take a deeper look at AI Enrichment and Multimodal Search. Other features exist such as: 

• Indexing 
• Vector and hybrid search 
• Full-text search 
• Full Lucene query syntax search 
• Relevance scoring 
• Semantic ranking 
• Knowledge stores 

AI Enrichment

AI Enrichment in the Azure AI Search service takes raw, unstructured data and transforms it into structured, searchable content using other Azure AI Services such as Computer Vision and Language Processing. What this means is that we can take inputs, such as PDFs and text files, and extract meaningful information from them so they can be accurately retrieved in response to a search query. 

How AI Enrichment Works

The process for AI Enrichment can be broken down into three phases: 

1. Date Importing 
2. Enrichment and Indexing 
3. Output Exploration

Data Importing is the step where an indexer connects a data source with unstructured documents and pulls them into the search service. 

Enrichment and Indexing is the largest and most complex step of the process. Enrichment starts with the indexer opening files and extracting key data from them, such as dates, keywords, or any other customizable entities. During this process, an “enriched” version of the document is created. This enriched document can either be temporary or stored for future reuse. The indexer then applies field mappings, which are paths between the source data and search index. We also create a path between the enriched data and search index. 

In the final step, Output Exploration, we start to see the end goal of setting up this service, which is to be able to navigate a previously unsearchable data source. This can appear in the form of a simple search bar or passed onto a chatbot that can dynamically retrieve the enriched data and present it in a user-friendly, conversational format.  

Use Cases for AI Enrichment

• Knowledge Management: Extract entities and key phrases from internal documents to support advanced search
• Customer Support: Enrich support tickets with metadata to improve query routing
• Research Analysis: Process academic papers or reports to extract insights for searchable archives

Multimodal Search

Multimodal search is the ability to ingest, understand, and retrieve information across multiple content types, including text, images, video, and audio. This enables us to search using more diverse methods such as similarity search and hybrid queries, which we will talk about more in this section.  

How Multimodal Search Works

Multimodal Search uses AI to vectorize and index non-text content, enabling similarity search and hybrid queries. The process involves the following steps: 

1. Content Ingestion 
2. Vectorization 
3. Index Storage 
4. Query Processing 

Content Ingestion is where we extract data from text, images, PDFs, and more via indexers.  

Vectorization uses AI models to convert unstructured content into vectors. Vectors are used to capture semantic or visual features of data. They are essential in getting accurate return results when querying for non-text elements, such as visual features. 

The process of storing the vectors and their associated metadata for fast retrieval is the Index Storage step. 

Finally, Query Processing is where a user’s search input is matched against relevant vectors so that semantically similar results can be returned.  

So, what is the end goal of multimodal search? While the overall goal is to expand your organization’s knowledge sharing and storage capabilities, the two primary added features are similarity searches and hybrid queries.

Similarity Search

This technique leverages vector embeddings to find content that is conceptually or visually like a query, rather than relying solely on exact keyword matches. For example, a user uploading an image of a red dress can retrieve similar dresses based on visual features like color and style, even if the textual descriptions differ. Similarity search enables semantic and visual matching across diverse data types. 

Hybrid Queries

Multimodal Search supports hybrid queries that combine similarity search with traditional keyword search for more comprehensive results. By merging results using Reciprocal Rank Fusion, Azure AI Search ensures that both semantic relevance and exact matches are considered. For instance, a query like “blue sneakers” can retrieve results based on both the text description and vectorized images of sneakers, providing a balanced and highly relevant output. 

With these two query processing features, an application can answer questions like “What is the process to approve a purchase order?” even when the only description of the process lives inside an embedded diagram in a PDF file. 

Use Cases for Multimodal Search 

• Conversational AI: Enable chatbots to answer queries using text, images, or PDFs from a knowledge base 
• E-Commerce: Allow users to upload product images to retrieve descriptions or reviews
• Healthcare: Query medical images and patient records for diagnostics
• Media Analysis: Search video or audio archives alongside text for comprehensive insights

Real-World Solution: Enhancing a Knowledge Base using Azure AI Search

To demonstrate the power of Azure AI Search, let’s explore a high-level example of how DMC could leverage this technology to solve a knowledge organization problem for a client. 

The Challenge

A multinational consulting firm needs a search solution to help consultants quickly access industry trends, regulations, and internal best practices. Their knowledge base includes thousands of PDFs, images, and internal reports across multiple languages, but traditional search tools deliver irrelevant results and struggle with non-text data. This leads to countless hours spent manually searching documents, impacting productivity and client response times. 

The Solution

DMC proposes that the firm implement Azure AI Search with AI Enrichment and Multimodal Search to create an intelligent search platform. By enriching and vectorizing their knowledge base, this enables consultants to retrieve accurate, contextually relevant content using text or image queries, streamlining research and improving client outcomes. This solution would include: 

Complete Knowledge Base Ingestion: Using Azure’s pre-built indexers vectorize and index a pre-existing knowledge base to make it easier to navigate. 

Enhanced Data Retrieval: With AI Enrichment and Multimodal Search, the search service can quickly and accurately retrieve information based off a query. 

Implementation

To build this solution, DMC provisions an Azure AI Search resource within the client’s Azure subscription. The development process includes: 

• Data Ingestion 
  • Store PDFs, images, and reports in Azure Blob Storage, ingested via Azure AI Search indexers
• AI Enrichment Pipeline 
  • Apply Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract text from scanned PDFs and images (e.g., charts, infographics) 
  • Use entity recognition to tag regulations, companies, and dates in documents
  • Employee translation skills to index multilingual content for global teams
• Multimodal Search Setup 
  • Vectorized images and text using Azure OpenAI and Computer Vision models
  • Configured hybrid search to combine keyword and vector queries for comprehensive retrieval
• Deployment 
  • Integrate the search solution into the firm’s internal portal using Azure SDKs, supporting text and image-based queries

Benefits

• Improved Relevance: Semantic ranking and vector search increases result accuracy
• Time Savings: Reduced research time by accessing insights via intuitive searches 
• Multimodal Flexibility: Image-based queries (e.g., uploading a chart) can now retrieve related documents, enhancing usability
• Global Accessibility: Multilingual indexing supports seamless search for international teams
• Scalability: Using Azure as the foundation, the service can scale easily with the firm’s needs and goals

Responsible AI

AI Enrichment and Multimodal Search rely on Azure AI models (e.g., Computer Vision, Language Service, Azure OpenAI) that may process personal or sensitive information.  

To uphold privacy and fairness, it is essential to consider the following: 

• Ensure input data complies with applicable privacy laws and regulations. Avoid processing sensitive personal data without explicit consent or legal basis. 
• AI models may inadvertently reflect biases in training data, potentially affecting entity recognition or image analysis. Regularly evaluate outputs for fairness and adjust configurations (e.g., custom skills or filters) to minimize biased results. 
• Clearly communicate to users when AI-generated outputs, such as extracted entities or vectorized content, are used in search results, ensuring they understand the role of AI. 

See the information on Microsoft’s guidelines on responsible use of AI Search. 

Why DMC? 

At DMC, we blend our years of expertise with the Azure ecosystem with a client-centric approach to deliver transformative cloud-based solutions. Our deep knowledge base enables us to craft tailored platforms that unlock actionable insights and streamline operations. As a Microsoft Solutions Partner, we are committed to responsible AI practices. We ensure ethical, secure, and scalable solutions that align with your business goals, empowering you to stay ahead and succeed. 

Let’s Recap

Azure AI Search is a powerful platform for intelligent search that uses AI Enrichment and Multimodal Search. AI Enrichment processes unstructured data into searchable, structured content, enabling applications like knowledge management and multilingual search. Multimodal Search extends this to images and audio, supporting cross-modal retrieval with similarity search and hybrid queries. Responsible AI practices ensure ethical use by addressing privacy, bias, and accuracy concerns. In our real-world example, a consulting firm could leverage these features to build an efficient search solution, boosting productivity and client satisfaction. For organizations seeking to unify diverse data and enhance discovery, Azure AI Search delivers expert results. 

At DMC, we’re passionate about harnessing these tools to solve complex challenges and deliver measurable results.

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Connecting IoT Devices to an IoT Edge device allows for data processing to be even faster since an IoT Edge device allows you to analyze data closer to your IoT devices. This gives you the advantage of preprocessing data prior to sending it to the cloud.  

In this article, we will review how we can get data running on an ASP.NET application of a child device to an OpenTelemetry Collector module running on an IoT Edge device up into Application Insights in the Azure cloud. Since the application is running on a separate device than the device running the OpenTelemetry Collector module, this example can be used to send trace and metrics data to Application Insights when an IoT device does not have direct access to the internet but the IoT Edge device does. 

OpenTelemetry is a framework and toolkit to manage telemetry data. It provides a protocol that specifies how telemetry should be formatted and set. OpenTelemetry is favorable to use since it is vendor and tool-agnostic and can be used with different Observability backends such as Jaegar and Prometheus. Additionally, OpenTelemetry provides SDKs to implement clients in different languages, including .NET. 

Prerequisites 

• Visual Studio 2022 Preview 
• Docker Desktop 
• Application Insights resource in Azure 
  • Application Insights is not a totally free service, but Azure offers a free account that comes with $200 in Azure credits.
• IoT Edge device to deploy modules 
  • The IoT Edge device will be used to deploy the OpenTelemetry Collector module. You can follow this tutorial to set up your IoT Edge device and example module. 

Implement the OpenTelemtry Exporter in ASP.NET Application 

To get started, I created an ASP.NET Core Web App (Razor Pages) project with .NET 8.0 from the Visual Studio project templates. 

Next, we will add an OpenTelemetry exporter to the service registration of our web application. There are a variety of exporters to choose from, but for this tutorial, we will use Prometheus to export metrics and OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) to export application logs. 

I chose Prometheus for metrics since it is highly reliable when recording numeric time series data, and it has an easy plug-in to use with C# and ASP.NET. I chose OTLP for logs since it also has an easy plug-in for ASP.NET and Prometheus does not support exporting traces. 

The Prometheus Exporter relies on the following packages: 

• OpenTelemetry.Exporter.Prometheus.AspNetCore 
• OpenTelemetry.Extensions.Hosting 

The OTLP Exporter relies on the following packages: 

• OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol 

Your Program.cs file should look like the following: 

1. Configure logging to log to the console and to the OpenTelemetry OTLP Exporter. The IP address used for the OTLP Exporter endpoint should be the IP address of the IoT Edge Device. The default HTTP port is 4318 with the relative path of “v1/logs” as described here. 

2. Configure OpenTelemetry to use the Prometheus Exporter to export metrics. This example configures built-in metrics for “Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting” and “Microsoft.AspNet.Diagnostics.” It also configures metrics, for example, custom metric “HatCo.HatStore.”

3. Configure the web application. 

4. Configure the web application to use the Prometheus scraping endpoint. Run background, test logic to generate logs and custom metric data for “HatCo.HatStore”. Run the application. 

Add the OpenTelemetry Collector Module to your IoT Edge Device 

We are going to test running the IoT Edge Modules in the simulator. This will allow the modules to run on your local Docker container registry. 

Within your IoT Edge VS project, we will edit the “deployment.template.json” file to add the OpenTelemetry Collector module. The “modules” section should look like the following example. 

The image name should match the desired image name when we create the OpenTelemetry Collector image in Build the Module. The $APPI_CONNECTION_STRING is an environment variable on your local computer that can be set in a .env file within the VS solution. APPI_CONNECTION_STRING sets up an environment variable within the OpenTelemetry Collector module, and this variable is used in the config.yaml file for configuring the module which I’ll detail in the next section.  

Once the deployment file is edited, right-click the Edge project and select “Generate Deployment for IoT Edge.”

Create the Configuration File for OpenTelemetry Collector

Before running the OpenTelemetry Collector module on our IoT Edge device, we will want to configure how the OpenTelemetry Collector module will receive data from exporters in our ASP.NET application and configure how the OpenTelemetry Collector should export the data it receives. The configuration for the module goes into a .yaml file. Your configuration file should look similar to the example below. You can add this config.yaml file into your IoT Edge solution that was created in the IoT Edge tutorial. 

In this example, we have configured the OpenTelemetry Collector module to use a Prometheus receiver to scrape metrics. The Prometheus receiver on the OpenTelemetry Collector module has to actively scrape the endpoint where the child device is running the ASP.NET application. We then use Azure Monitor to report those metrics to Application Insights. For the “scrape_configs” section, the “targets” are the endpoints where you would like to scrape metrics from. You can have multiple “scrape_configs”. Note that as configured, Prometheus will scrape only from HTTP endpoints. If your ASP.NET project uses different ports for HTTP and HTTPS, ensure to provide the HTTP port. 

We have also configured an OTLP receiver to retrieve logs. The default endpoint for the OTLP receiver using the HTTP protocol is https://static.dmcinfo.com/v1/logs which is what is configured for the OTLP exporter on the ASP.NET project. “Localhost” here references the Edge device. The logs are also exported to Application Insights via Azure Monitor. Note: the “localhost” link is part of the tutorial and can only be accessed locally as part of running the tutorial itself.  

Build the Module 

To build the module in Docker Desktop, we will utilize the public OpenTelemetry Collector module image, and then we will copy our configuration file into it to modify the agent behavior. Create a Dockerfile to pull the OpenTelemetry Collector module image and copy over your configuration file. In the Dockerfile, we expose 4318 so that the ASP.NET application can push logs to our OTLP endpoint. The example Dockerfile below assumes that the Dockerfile and the config.yaml file are in the same directory. 

Within a command prompt, navigate to the directory where your Dockerfile.amd64 file lives. Run the following command to build and push your image to your local Docker container registry. 

docker build -t localhost:5000/opentelemetrycollector:0.0.1-windows-amd64 -f Dockerfile.amd64 . 

docker build -t localhost:5000/opentelemetrycollector:0.0.1-windows-amd64 -f Dockerfile.amd64 . 

Deploy the Edge Device and Collect Logs and Metrics 

After generating your deployment file for the Edge device, right-click the Edge project and select “Build and Run IoT Edge Modules in Simulator.” This will run the OpenTelemetry Collector module from your Edge device on your local instance of Docker Desktop. You should see the logs for the OpenTelemetry Collector module trying to scrape your application metrics. 

View Metrics and Logs in Application Insights 

Once the Edge device is running, run your ASP.NET project. Navigate to your Application Insights resource in Azure Portal. In the left-hand navigation bar within the Application Insights resource under Monitor, select Logs. Query the logs for “traces” and “customMetrics.”  

Under traces, you will see your application logs appear. 

Under “customMetrics”, you will see your application metrics which includes the example metric “hat_sold_Hats_total.”

Conclusion 

With this tutorial as an example, you now have the ability to collect metrics and logs via an IoT Edge device from multiple applications! 

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DMC recently identified a critical need to enhance the speed and accuracy with which we handle incoming customer inquiries. Historically, our dedicated team of Project Coordinators managed this process. They played a crucial role in filtering and routing inquiries from potential customers who reached out through our website’s contact page. This manual process, while effective, posed challenges in scalability and speed as DMC continued to grow.

The Need for Innovation

Our goal has always been to respond to potential clients swiftly, as we believe promptness is key to building trust and demonstrating our dedication to potential customers; however, the manual process required Project Coordinators to:

1. Continually monitor a shared Outlook inbox for new leads.
2. Pre-qualify each inquiry to filter out spam and identify legitimate leads.
3. Determine the most appropriate service area within DMC for the lead.
4. Assign the lead to the most appropriate engineer and ensure a timely response.
5. Create a new lead in our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

To streamline these steps and enhance our responsiveness, we introduced Sales Buddy.

How Sales Buddy Works

Sales Buddy is an AI-powered Slack Bot that automates the initial stages of our customer inquiry handling process. It integrates cutting-edge technology using Azure OpenAI models, Slack’s Webhook API, and Microsoft Power Automate. Here’s how it functions:

• Monitoring and Qualification: Sales Buddy continually monitors our shared Outlook inbox for incoming leads. Utilizing Azure OpenAI, it evaluates each inquiry based on sophisticated criteria to determine its legitimacy and relevance.
• Intelligent Routing: After qualifying an inquiry, Sales Buddy identifies the most suitable DMC service area to handle the request. This decision is based on predefined logic that understands our service offerings and their alignment with the potential needs of the customer.
• Seamless Integration: Once an appropriate service area is selected, Sales Buddy communicates this via a message to one of many designated Slack channels, ensuring that the right sales teams are promptly notified about new opportunities.
• CRM Integration: Finally, Sales Buddy automatically creates a new lead record in our Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. This reduces manual data entry, enabling faster and more efficient follow-ups from the DMC team.

Benefits and Impact

The implementation of Sales Buddy has transformed the way we manage customer inquiries. By automating the pre-qualification and routing processes, we have significantly reduced the response time, allowing our engineering teams to engage with potential clients quicker than ever before. This not only enhances customer satisfaction but also allows our Project Coordinators to focus on more strategic tasks, thereby improving overall productivity.

Furthermore, Sales Buddy serves as a perfect example of how AI and automation can be leveraged in a low-code environment: making advanced technology accessible to non-developers. This accessibility ensures that our teams can easily maintain and adapt the system as our needs evolve.

Looking Forward

The success of Sales Buddy is a steppingstone towards more comprehensive AI integration across various facets of DMC’s operations. We are committed to continuous improvement and innovation, ensuring that we not only meet but exceed the expectations of our clients and stakeholders.

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Under Microsoft’s legacy Gold & Silver partner program, DMC earned special recognition for achieving 9 competencies. With Microsoft’s new Solution Partner Designation Program, there are only six possible designations. To earn a designation, DMC had to pass a series of all-new Microsoft certification exams, achieve strict customer success measurements, and meet new sales performance targets. DMC now holds two of the six designations through this new program.

A Solutions Partner for Digital & App Innovation (Azure) demonstrates broad capability to help customers build, run, and manage applications across multiple clouds, on-premises, and at the edge, with the tools and frameworks of a customer’s choice.

Becoming a Solutions Partner for Digital & App Innovation (Azure) gives organizations an easy way to identify partners that have the commitment to training, accreditation, and have delivered solutions that enabled customer success. Examples include:

• Migrating and deploying production web application workloads, applying DevOps, and managing app services in Azure
• Managing production workloads in the cloud using containers and managing hosted Kubernetes environments in Azure
• Implementing secure DevOps practices and driving DevOps adoption while using Azure and GitHub

DMC held the Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status for 19 consecutive years prior to the launch of the new Microsoft Solution Partner Designation Program, and DMC earned nine of the 18 possible Microsoft competencies during this time. We are so proud to have earned our first designation for Data and AI (Azure) in the first few months of the new program’s launch, and our second designation shortly following.

Learn more about DMC’s Digital Workplace Solutions & Application Development offerings, and please contact us if you need assistance with your next project.

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Under Microsoft’s legacy Gold & Silver partner program, DMC earned special recognition for achieving 9 competencies. With Microsoft’s new Solution Partner Designation Program, there are only six possible designations. To earn a designation, DMC had to pass a series of all-new Microsoft certification exams, achieve strict customer success measurements, and meet new sales performance targets.

The Data and AI (Azure) designation recognizes DMC’s success in delivering solutions for clients in the areas of:

• Modernization of Web Applications
• Analytics
• AI and Machine Learning
• Kubernetes
• Windows Server/SQL Server Migration to Microsoft Azure.

DMC held the Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status for 19 consecutive years prior to the launch of the new Microsoft Solution Partner Designation Program, and DMC earned nine of the 18 possible Microsoft competencies during this time. We are so proud to have earned our first designation in the first few months of the new program’s launch, and our team is already well on their way to earning a second designation.

Learn more about DMC’s Digital Workplace Solutions & Application Development offerings, and please contact us if you need assistance with your next project.

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Azure Reserved Instances

Microsoft Azure is an enterprise-grade cloud service platform: a complete set of secure application services for computing, storage, data, networking, and app development. Azure Reserved Instances allows companies with stable and predictable workloads to pre-purchase a set amount of Azure usage for time periods of 1 or 3 years. Monthly payments remain an option. Users can also pay the entire amount upfront.
 

Program Flexibility

Azure Reserved Instances is flexible. Customers who find they need to increase the compute power of some of their Azure Reserved Instances can do so without issue, as long as they maintain the same type of reservations. Companies also have the option of cancelling their entire Azure Reserved Instance with payment of a 12% early termination fee.
 
Used strategically, Azure Reserved Instances can greatly reduce a company's overall cloud spend. With an increasing number of workloads being moved to the cloud at an accelerated rate, this tool is something that should be considered closely by all companies.
 
If you would like to learn more about how Azure Reserved Instances can work for your company, please feel free to reach out to Sales@localhost. We will be happy to schedule a call to discuss your needs. 

Learn more about DMC’s Microsoft Azure expertise. 
 

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Web applications almost always communicate with other services or applications in some capacity. Since we want these interactions to remain secure, any communication between services should be authenticated. There are many ways that applications can authenticate themselves but usually, the process requires a certification, password, or some combination of the two. This can be cumbersome to manage, but that’s where Azure Key Vault steps in.

Azure Key Vault

Key Vault is a secure and convenient service to manage an application’s certificates, keys, and secrets. You can easily and securely store this sensitive information in the vault and choose which applications have access to it. Then, Azure handles the authentication and authorization—it’s as simple as that. Nobody will be able to access Key Vault unless you have given them explicit access, and there are even additional advanced security options for especially sensitive information. For a more in-depth look at these options, I recommend reading through the official Microsoft documentation.

Setup

Now that we know the uses and benefits of Key Vault, I’ll walk through how to set it up.

1. Import your certificates, keys, and secrets. For background, certificates are X509 certificates usually provided by a Certificate Authority. Keys are cryptographic keys used for authentication, authorization, and encryption (Key Vault supports software- and HSM-protected keys). Lastly, secrets are everything else you might want to protect such as passwords or database connection strings.
2. Once this information is imported, you need to set up access to the Key Vault for your applications. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest is to use managed identities. The other services in your Azure accounts have identities that are automatically managed by the Azure Active Directory authentication.
   
   When adding an access policy, select your existing applications and services, then Azure will handle the rest!
   
   • Note: only set up access policies for entities that need to use what’s in the Key Vault. There are also options to set individual read/write access for certificates, keys, and secrets. Microsoft has a great explanation of these options. 

3. The last step is to modify the code in your application to retrieve items from the Key Vault when needed. For this, you should use the most recent .NET library for managing Key Vault secrets, the SecretClient class. Initialize a SecretClient instance with the URL of the Key Vault and then your application is able to retrieve secrets by name as long as access has been granted.

Azure Key Vault is an extremely useful tool to use with existing Azure applications that use secrets to interact with other applications or services. It’s more secure, convenient, and traceable than storing the secret directly in the application. Since Key Vault keeps all this information in one location, you only need to make a single change when updating a shared certificate or secret—instead of having to go through each application individually. Azure Key Vault greatly improves the efficiency of this process, while still maintaining a high level of security and monitoring.

Learn more about DMC’s Application Development expertise and contact us today to get started on your next project.

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