Small Step Systems

We help manufacturers of IoT devices control their own fate.

Business meets system architecture: Getting the big decisions right!

Our Offering

System Architecture

System architecture answers the difficult questions with big impact early in product development. Which SoM comes with a CRA-compliant Linux? Which components should manufacturers develop themselves, which outsource and which buy off the shelf? Which team structure leads to an architecture for the system that is upgradable for the next 10-15 years? How can manufacturers save costs by reducing the number of embedded systems in their machines?

38 posts

Cyber Resilience Act

The CRA forces manufacturers to protect their embedded systems properly against cybersecurity threats. Otherwise, they face heavy penalties and sales bans. We provide practical tips, how to perform a risk assessment, which security measures are enough to satisfy the essential product requirements, how to tame the thousands of vulnerabilities, and whether it's worth to make an embedded system comply with the CRA at all.

24 posts

License Compliance

A typical embedded Linux system comprises 250+ software components under 75+ different licenses like BSD, Apache, LGPL, EPL and GPL. You must satisfy the license obligations for all components and ensure that license combinations are legal and desirable. A special focus is on using Qt under LGPL and on avoiding the hefty fees for commercial Qt licenses on embedded systems.

11 posts

Applications & Services

Applications and services mediate between users and machines. They represent the core business. Embedded systems often start out as a single application, but typically end up as multiple applications and services. Our experience lead us to the adoption of a winning strategy. We organise applications and services as microservices and design them according to the ports-and-adapters architecture.

15 posts

Embedded Linux

Every SoM comes with a makeshift Linux system. Every manufacturer must add OTA updates, security measures, remote access, GUI frameworks and more. That's a lot of duplicated work. This would be much more efficient, if a SoM maker provides a Linux with all the features ready for use by manufacturers. Toradex does this with Torizon. We show how manufacturers can benefit from this groundwork with minimal effort. Torizon even runs on non-Toradex SoMs. SoM = Solutions on Module.

34 posts

Continuous Delivery

Following the principles and practices of continuous delivery helps manufacturers provide better software faster. Continuous delivery is all about feedback within seconds, minutes, hours and days. The best way to gain this feedback is to run a continuous delivery pipeline, which enables your development team to work at a constant and fast pace - without sacrificing quality. Continuous delivery is the secret formula for high-performance teams.

24 posts

Newsletter: Better Built By Burkhard

Once a month, I'll share my my hands-on experience in building usage-defined machines and IoT devices. Let us discover topics like system thinking, solutions on modules (SoMs) and high-performance teams together. See the newsletter archive.

Latest posts

Surviving the EU Cyber Resilience Act

What does the CRA require from you to avoid sales bans after 11 December 2027 and penalties threatening the existence of your company? Risk assessment, vulnerability handling and technical documentation. And tough decisions which products to retire.