iONLINE Connected Networks, one of South Africa’s largest enterprise private LTE providers, has launched the latest version of CentralFlex, its innovative SIM and data management platform for 3G, 4G, 5G, NB-IoT, and LTE-M connectivity. Developed completely in-house, CentralFlex’s powerful features enable businesses to better monitor, manage and control their data usage, and curtail revenue leakage. Considering the increasing number of data-intensive applications in today’s world, and the need for constant connectivity, organisations welcome the opportunity to better manage data and control the costs thereof.

Gary Muir, Head of Software Development at iONLINE, says the use of real-time data from network partners is crucial to accurate usage reporting. “The close integration with the network components of the APN provides greater control of and details about SIM usage,” he explains. “CentralFlex’s real-time reporting functionality allows you to make quicker decisions on quotas and to be more agile in your data management. This allows your teams to make decisions faster and with greater accuracy because they have more – and better – information on hand.”

While there are many benefits to CentralFlex, key among these is effective reporting, cost management controls, flexibility, risk reduction, and real-time troubleshooting. The ability to monitor data usage means there is less risk when deploying a new IoT solution, while the capacity to view connections and connection histories in real-time means that patterns of problematic connectivity can be easily identified, helping to minimise downtime and the disruptions which this causes.

Dashboard reporting allows for the easy administration and management of APN data on CentralFlex. Considering the complexity of APN SIM management, the CentralFlex dashboard was designed with the user top of mind. It has an attractive and user-friendly design, while the interface is intuitively simple, with a logical flow.

Extensive reporting across various dimensions, including SIMs, users and groups, allows you to effortlessly combine and roll up your reporting as needed. This aids budgeting controls within the organisation by increasing visibility into SIM data costs, which are notoriously difficult to manage on an APN product.

CentralFlex has multiple user roles, from view only to total control over all users, allowing you to assign specific access privileges to different individuals or teams. Whether you need to grant access solely for reporting purposes or have a technical team that needs comprehensive control and functionality access, CentralFlex offers this flexibility.

The platform provides near-real-time network connectivity metrics, allowing you to monitor the extent of your connections and the status of each. The ability to see and analyse trends over selected periods, identify top users, and pinpoint high data consumers provides detailed insight into behaviour. You can also view unused SIMs on your profile and decide how best to manage this.

CentralFlex allows for a flexible structure in terms of a hierarchy of data usage, such as with groups and users, for which there is no limit to the number you can create on the system. It is also possible to set custom notification levels at both group and user level, providing alerts on data usage.

The platform comes with a full API suite, enabling you to integrate your existing systems into it. This lets you use iONLINE’s advanced networking features by building them into your existing workflows, applications and processes.

The ability to aggregate data usage across all SIMs, carriers and networks creates a single data pool, thereby simplifying the scaling of your business across diverse network coverage areas.

CentralFlex also allows for network subnetting and the ringfencing of a set of IP addresses in order to apply different firewall policies or rules to them.

Several value-added services are available to complement CentralFlex, including IMEI or device locking, location-based services (LBS), device tracking, and custom data labelling.

“CentralFlex stands out from traditional management platforms because of its close integration with the network components of the APN,” says Muir. “This, together with real-time reporting functionality, empowers you to make informed decisions, set more accurate quotas, and be more agile in your data management. Equipped with such comprehensive information, your teams can act faster and with greater precision, thereby driving operational efficiency.”

The extensive capabilities of CentralFlex are transforming how businesses handle their data. “CentralFlex enables organisations to harness the full value of their data usage and provides the tools for more precise decision-making while scaling solutions in their organisation,” says David Farquharson, founder and CEO of iONLINE. “We are proud to deliver a solution that works this hard for our customers, and makes such a valuable contribution to their business success.”

To see this and other solutions in action, visit https://www.ionlinesp.com/management-portal and book a demo. You can also follow iONLINE on Facebook and LinkedIn to keep abreast of the latest news, launches and product releases.