Validate Secure MSF Deployment Before Production Rollout
The PoC your IT organisation asks for before any of the others can start. One non-production environment, your identity method, your network rules, a real restore test and an operational handover — so the deployment question is answered with evidence instead of a vendor questionnaire.
Validate my deploymentTalk to a manufacturing engineerIs this the problem you need to solve?
- A promising project is blocked because IT has not been able to validate the deployment.
- Data residency and access-control questions are answered by a sales sheet, not by a test.
- Nobody has ever tested a restore, only confirmed that backups run.
- Operational ownership after go-live is undefined, so nobody wants to sign.
Primary buyer: CIO or IT Manager · Infrastructure Manager · Cybersecurity Lead · Digital Transformation Manager · IT / OT Manager
What this PoC will prove
Recommended pilot scope
- One non-production tenant or environment in the intended topology.
- Representative user roles, including at least one that should be denied access.
- The approved identity method — SSO or the agreed alternative.
- One data connection representative of the real integration.
- Monitoring, backup and a genuine restore test.
What will be live during the PoC
How this PoC runs
Durations are typical, not guaranteed. What extends a schedule: missing or incomplete data, security and network approvals, hardware lead times, sample collection, installation access, the production schedule, ERP test access, and the time your team needs to review results.
No unplanned shutdown is expected. Any installation window or controlled interruption is agreed with you in advance and scheduled around production.
How success will be measured
| Metric | How it is defined | Where the number comes from | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Provisioning time | Elapsed time from approval to a usable environment in the chosen topology. | MSF platform data | Technical |
| Access-control correctness | Every representative role tested for what it may and, crucially, may not reach. | MSF platform data | Technical |
| Connectivity | The agreed data connection working through your real network and firewall rules, not through an exception. | MSF platform data | Technical |
| Representative response time | Response time for representative user actions from the locations your users actually work in. | MSF platform data | Technical |
| Monitoring and audit coverage | Share of the agreed events, metrics and audit records actually captured and visible. | MSF platform data | Technical |
| Backup completion and restore result | Backup completing on schedule, and a restore performed to a working state with the time it took recorded. | MSF platform data | Technical |
| Configuration findings | Security and configuration issues found during validation, each with a severity and a remediation. | MSF platform data | Technical |
| Operational handover completeness | Share of the operations checklist your IT team accepts as complete and documented. | Observation and user interview | Adoption |
Before implementation, MSF and your team agree how each metric is calculated, where the baseline comes from, what data is excluded, and what result supports a rollout decision. This page lists what gets measured; the actual targets belong in the written PoC scope, not in a marketing claim.
What you need to provide
- Deployment preference — cloud, on-premise or hybrid — and any data residency requirement.
- Identity and access requirements, and the network and security policies that apply.
- Approved endpoints for the data connection, and the user roles to model.
- Monitoring expectations, backup policy and the IT owners who will accept the result.
Who does what
Meta Smart Factory provides
- Discovery workshop and scope facilitation
- Solution configuration for the agreed scope
- Integration and connection work inside that scope
- MSF hardware listed in the proposal
- Training for the pilot users
- The KPI definitions and validation method
- Issue tracking and support during the pilot
- The final result report and rollout design
- The provisioned environment, role configuration and monitoring setup for the agreed topology.
- Backup and restore evidence, with the restore actually performed and timed rather than described.
You provide
- A named business owner and a named technical owner
- Timely access to users, the line, machines and approved systems
- An accurate explanation of the process and the master data
- Network, power, mounting and safety access
- ERP, PLC and vendor documentation, plus the experts who know them
- Representative samples or historical data
- Validation that the baseline is fair
- Feedback and the acceptance decision
- Network, firewall and identity approvals, and the administrator who can grant them.
- Acceptance criteria for operational handover, defined before the validation phase.
Defined in the written proposal
- Panel PCs, tablets, servers and GPU servers
- Cameras, lenses, lighting and enclosures
- Scanners, printers, RFID readers, meters and sensors
- Travel, installation, freight, import duty and local electrical work
- Whether hardware is rented or purchased
- Whether any PoC fee is credited against a rollout
Commercial terms, hardware ownership, travel, integration scope and any rollout credit are defined in the written PoC proposal. They are not the same for every product, and this page does not promise them.
What you receive at the end
- A validated non-production environment.
- Architecture diagram of the deployment as built.
- Role and access matrix with test results, including the denial cases.
- Connectivity test results through your real network rules.
- Backup and restore evidence with timings.
- Operations checklist, security gap list and the production deployment plan.
Dependencies, exclusions and limits
This PoC depends on
- Security and network approvals being granted before the configuration phase.
- An IT owner available for the access-control and handover review.
Not included in this PoC
- Penetration testing and formal security certification audits.
- Production migration and cutover, which belong to the rollout.
No certification, availability level, disaster-recovery guarantee, data-residency claim or security control is asserted here unless it is documented and applicable to the deployment you select. What this PoC produces is tested evidence for your environment, plus an explicit gap list where something is not yet proven.
Go, adjust or stop — the decision gate
Frequently asked questions
Do we have to use your cloud?
No. Cloud, on-premise and hybrid are all supported, and which one is validated is your choice made in the readiness step. The point of this PoC is to prove the model you actually want, under your policies.
Will you claim ISO or SOC compliance?
Only what is documented and applicable, and it is stated as such. A PoC produces tested evidence for your environment — provisioning, access, connectivity, restore, logging — plus an honest list of what it did not test.
Why insist on a restore test?
Because a backup that has never been restored is an assumption. Performing and timing a real restore is one of the few deployment claims that can be proven completely inside a short PoC, and it is one of the most valuable.
Does this need to come before the other PoCs?
Often yes, in organisations where IT governance gates every project. It is short, it unblocks the rest, and its output — the architecture diagram, access matrix and operations checklist — is reused by whichever functional PoC follows.
Related products and PoC programs
Request this Proof of Concept
Tell us the scope you have in mind and we will come back with a written PoC plan: what gets connected, what you provide, how success is measured and what the decision at the end looks like.