System Level Solutions: An Integration Specialist

In today's Smart technology solutions market, there are big players, attempting to dominate by leveraging existing corporate relationships and pushing licensed proprietary solutions to ensure long-term customer tie-in, and, there are smaller players who have a very narrow solution—not being able to deliver into the more robust landscape dominated by the big names. This is where a company such as System Level Solutions makes so much sense to a buyer trying to navigate the marketplace looking for the right solution provider.

With a strong focus on smart energy, industrial IoT, and utility-grade wireless solutions, SLS has been providing superior hardware and software consulting services and products since 2000. SLS essentially is made out to be a one-stop shop for everything from intellectual property to hardware to board design and manufacturing and complete software development including firmware, device driver and application software. Where it stands out, is in the fact that SLS is unique in its composition – small enough to move fast, self-contained, and self-sufficient having so many technology capabilities in-house and mature enough to deliver competitively into business domains, which are typically dominated by large corporate entities.

Simplifying Complex IoT Deployments

In a large-scale complex IoT or Smart deployment, customers are often offered a blanket proposition, which is detrimental to establishing trust. SLS has built its IoT and Smart framework for its products so that each component of the framework is interchangeable and thus can be applied as required to build solutions as if using Lego. "Very quickly our customers told us that they like the reassurance that they can see the high-level building blocks and understand the role each one plays in the overall solution," smiles Paresh Patel, President, and CEO of the company. This makes it easy to demonstrate how multiple networks and technologies can be integrated and gives the customer control and understanding that hybrid and heterogeneous solutions are the norms.

SLS skillfully uses architecture design, HDL coding, test bench with test scripts, functional-verification and device fitting to pin out, place and route and validation on a hardware platform to suit the need of customers into their system. These exclusive features incorporated in their work portal makes SLS stand out in the crowd. Ever since its inception, SLS has worked with clients like Altera now Intel PSG (USA), BHEL (Bhopal, India), Telefonica (UK), and 1ClickSMT (China). Similarly, SLS provides remarkable creativity and integration know-how that assists designers to move in the right direction and surmise the risks involved in combining disparate hardware, software, and intellectual property (IP).

SLS not only provides IP as a core competency but also offers design services to serve the specific requirement of each client from inception to completion, or anywhere in between. SLS sits in between these and offers enterprise-grade secure solutions, which offer a variety of open standards and communications technologies. "We expect these layers to change during the platform lifetime and build that flexibility into the design by employing whatever technology fits best for the customer’s outcomes," says Patel.


Having collaborated with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) a company that specializes power transformermanufacturing, power transmission, railway locomotive technology, SLS crafted a sensing system. This sensing system assisted BHEL to springboard itself into the next-gen of products. The customized sensing system developed for BHEL (500MVA transformer monitoring) conglomerated data from sensors and pushed it all the way to the cloud where business analytics and other features could be applied to visualize the problems and find practical solutions.

Placing ‘Engineering’ at the Forefront

Whilst SLS has a robust, established standards-based development process for its projects and products, it also does a fair share of Skunk Works projects on the side, and many of these end up on the shelf only to be taken off shortly afterward to be integrated into a solution. This inquisitive and demanding approach comes from the very top of the organization and is fuelled by the start-up energy which keeps SLS products on the leading edge. Innovation comes from empowered engineers on the coal face, and the organization and leadership style encourage it to happen and flow into our products in a carefully controlled way. “Our dedicated team of experts keep track of the right ingredients to build relevant smart city solutions in planning, implementing and maintaining the latest products and services complying with the new age intelligent device requirements,” explains Patel.

In addition, customers are in support of a company that can design, develop, and make almost anything. "When we can’t do a good job of something, we are happy to say so. This way we foster a transparent relationship with clients,” says Patel. On the other hand, clients are also welcome for involvement in the progression and design of products, especially when engineering is placed front and foremost in everything SLS does.

SLS has supported many Smart projects in various regions. In each case, the platform needs to be capable of growth and flexible enough to adapt to new use-case scenarios, which are uncovered during the deployment. Having this background with such a wide experience and the very detailed low-level knowledge of the implementation allows SLS to offer solutions, which do not tie their customers down to one particular technology or protocol, and thus keep doors open.

SLS is taking great care not to overextend and is free from typical pressures to expand rapidly just to meet shareholder or investor objectives, and will continue to maintain its distinct and unique capabilities. "New opportunities are arriving from all over the globe, and we are likely to form partnerships with like-minded individuals and companies which will ensure that the culture and approach do not suffer during expansion," concludes Patel.