Remote devices (and connected products) in multi-location operations (e.g. quick-service restaurants, retail stores, apartments, storage facilities, airports, hospitals, businesses, and countless other physical locations) move through three distinct lifecycle phases:
- Start of Life
- Life, and
- End of Life
1. Start of Life
This includes design, manufacturing, warehousing, and staging activities that occur before devices become operational.
2. Life
This covers the operational period when devices actively support business functions. This phase includes discovery and enrollment, integration with enterprise systems, monitoring and observability, configuration management, automation, reporting, and asset tracking.
3. End of Life
This encompasses device relocation, removal, and recycling.
The operational Life phase represents the longest period of a device's existence and requires the most active management. For organizations operating across multiple locations, this phase determines whether devices deliver reliable performance or create operational disruptions.
How Canopy Supports Device Lifecycle Management and Connected Product Operations
Canopy provides a platform for monitoring and managing remote devices and other endpoints from a central location throughout their operational Life phase. The platform works with devices running Windows, Linux, Android, or iOS, often through the Canopy Leaf agent software.
How Canopy supports the phases of remote device or connected product Life
Discover, Provision, and Enroll
Canopy enables asset discovery, provisioning, and enrollment into the platform. Organizations can onboard devices to establish visibility and control. The enrollment process captures device identity, location information, and configuration data.
The platform supports various device types including kiosks, POS systems, network switches, security cameras, digital signage, and power management systems.
Integration: Connect and Collect
Canopy integrates with enterprise systems to establish bi-directional communication between connected devices and business platforms.
Supported integrations include:
- DataDog - Metrics and logging
- Elastic - Search and analytics
- Splashtop - Remote access
- Slack - Notifications and collaboration
- Salesforce - CRM and service workflows
- ServiceNow - IT service management
- Cisco Meraki - Network device management
These are just a sample of integrations possible with Canopy. These integrations allow device data to flow into existing business systems and enable automated actions based on device status or events.
Analysis: Observability
Canopy provides observability capabilities to identify potential device failure points. The platform monitors device health metrics in real-time, allowing teams to detect issues before they cause complete device failures.
Organizations can track metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, network connectivity, application performance, and custom device-specific measurements. This data supports proactive maintenance and issue resolution.
Configure Actionable Insights
Canopy allows organizations to configure custom KPIs and actionable insights. These configurations transform device data into metrics that reflect business-relevant device health indicators.
The platform includes custom fields and tables functionality. Organizations can define custom fields to track location-specific information such as franchise territory, manager contacts, equipment specifications, or compliance data. Custom tables allow logging of time-series data such as maintenance records, performance measurements, or operational events.
Monitor and Manage
Canopy provides centralized visibility across all enrolled devices. The platform aggregates device status, health metrics, and alert information into a unified interface.
Remote management capabilities allow teams to troubleshoot issues, modify configurations, and perform maintenance actions without physical site visits. This includes remote command execution, configuration updates, and device restart capabilities.
Automate
Canopy enables workflow automation for routine device management tasks. Organizations can configure automated responses to device events, scheduled maintenance actions, and integration triggers.
Automation capabilities include automated configuration management, state enforcement, alert generation, issue remediation workflows, and triggered actions in integrated systems. These automations reduce manual intervention requirements and enable consistent device management across locations.
Reporting and Analytics
Canopy includes reporting capabilities for fleet operations analysis. Reports provide visibility into device uptime, failure rates, performance metrics, and maintenance history.
Analytics capabilities allow organizations to identify trends, compare performance across locations or device types, and analyze historical data to inform operational decisions.
Asset Management
Canopy maintains real-time asset information for all enrolled devices. The platform tracks device location, configuration state, software versions, and operational status.
Integration with ITSM platforms allows Canopy to synchronize asset data with systems of record. This ensures asset inventories remain current as devices are deployed, relocated, or decommissioned.
Device Compatibility
Canopy works with connected devices through multiple connection methods:
Windows and Linux devices use the Canopy Leaf agent for full management capabilities.
Network devices that support SNMP or ICMP protocols can be monitored without agent installation. This includes network switches, routers, and other IP-connected infrastructure.
Specific integrations are available for certain device types and platforms, including Allied Telesis network switches, Cisco Meraki cloud-managed devices, and Dell iDRAC for out-of-band server management.
The platform manages various device categories found in multi-location operations: point-of-sale systems, payment terminals, self-service kiosks, kitchen display systems, digital menu boards, security cameras, network infrastructure, and power management systems.
Unified Device Management Approach
Canopy provides a single platform for managing different device types. Organizations can monitor and manage their complete connected device infrastructure through one interface rather than using separate tools for different device categories.
This unified approach consolidates device data, alerts, and management actions into a centralized system. When multiple devices at a location experience issues, teams can correlate information and identify root causes using a single platform view.