Now that smartphones everywhere means digital connectivity anywhere, any physical goods you can hold in your hand can become a rich digital experience. Thinfilm NFC makes the connection seamlessly, with sensor technology printed on smart labels, attached to a variety of packages. Anything that can be labeled can be tracked at any and every step from factory to consumers’ homes— and in real time. Because Thinfilm labels make every unit secure and perfectly unique, it can create a continuous and complete stream of data every time someone chooses to interact with that unique item.

The Challenge

To record any discrete interaction between a physical object and any person with a smartphone, securely and at massive scale, Thinfilm needed a global cloud platform. With a simple tap, it needed to record any tracking and analytics data across oceans – to enable seamless tracking by manufacturers, distributors, and consumers. At every step, they all needed complete confidence in the integrity of the data, at every unique point in the value stream.

The Solution

Thinfilm needed to operate a global footprint at consumer-scale, to track the tap of a smartphone anywhere in the world. CloudGeometry AWS DBMS Migration Services helped them move to AWS Aurora RDBMS, migrating off of multiple standalone regional database instances, scattered either as individual EC2 servers or hosted in servers in regional CoLos. This solution let marketers (Thinfilm customers’ end-users) connect directly with consumers, right as the product is in consumers’ hands. Each simple tap of that smartphone creates a trackable, immutable 1-1 interaction, lighting up rich data to drive campaigns and analytics.

To turn any tap on a smart label into an IoT device payload, Thinfilm NFC enables multi-state data capture and transmission. That does away with the complexity of deploying and managing discrete connected devices.

CloudGeometry also helped Thinfilm extend its cloud platform to provide immutable supply chain traceability with blockchain. Integrated with the Ethereum blockchain app platform, it creates a specific, permanent, and unalterable digital history of provenance — transparently accessible by consumers.

The Benefits

Thanks to the AWS cloud platform, Thinfilm has successfully accelerated introductions of a broad array of applications and digital commerce solutions into new markets worldwide.

<div class="case__txt--cols"><div><h4>Migration to global RDBMS</h4><p>AWS Aurora gave Thinfilm better, globally consistent DBMS price-performance, including replicas running inside and outside the great wall of China.</p></div><div><h4>Integrated IoT Applications</h4><p>CloudGeometry CI/CD makes it easier to onboard new IoT data payloads like NFC, iterating thru agile development, deployment, release management, and production operations.</p></div><div><h4>Secure, transparent blockchain apps</h4><p>Distributed ledger workflows delivered advanced 1-1 marketing and analytics with tokens, secure user accounts, and contracts for supply chain provenance.</p></div></div>