Mark Kobbert

CTO of symestic GmbH. Responsible for the cloud-MES architecture since 2014. B.Sc. Business Informatics.

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I have been building the technical foundation of the SYMESTIC cloud-MES platform since 2014:
From the microservice architecture on Microsoft Azure to IoT gateway connectivity and real-time data processing from over 15,000 machines across 18 countries. My job is to make sure that machine data from any machine park – regardless of age, regardless of manufacturer – arrives in the cloud reliably, securely, and in real time.

I joined SYMESTIC as a software developer straight out of university:
Business Informatics at SRH University Heidelberg. The intersection of business logic and software architecture attracted me then and defines my work today. I do not think in features but in problems that need solving: How do you connect a 1995 press without touching the PLC? How do you process 50,000 data points per second without latency? How do you ensure a system runs stably across 18 countries with varying network conditions?

The decision that shaped my work most was rebuilding the platform from scratch in the mid-2010s:
Instead of lifting the existing on-premise software into the cloud, we started over. Cloud-native, microservices, API-first, on Microsoft Azure. This was not an incremental update – it was a clean-sheet redesign. Every decision – from database architecture to gateway protocol – was made for scalability, real-time capability, and maintainability.

I see the result every day in the monitoring dashboards:
A platform with 99.9% availability that scales automatically when a customer onboards 200 machines at once. IoT gateways that install in two to four hours per machine – OPC UA for modern controls, digital I/O gateways for legacy equipment without any digital interface. No PLC modification, no production interruption, no months-long integration project.

What drives me:
Most MES projects fail not because of the software but because of the implementation. Too long, too complex, too expensive. My goal is to eliminate that barrier through architecture: a platform that deploys as fast as a SaaS tool and integrates as deeply as an enterprise MES. That is not a contradiction – it is an architecture decision.

Career

Since 2020: symestic GmbH, CTO. Full technical responsibility for the cloud-MES platform. Architecture decisions, infrastructure, gateway development, security, scaling.

2014–2020: symestic GmbH, Software Development. Built the cloud-native platform from the ground up. Migration from on-premise to cloud-native. C#, .NET, Azure, SQL.

2014–2017: SRH University Heidelberg. B.Sc. Business Informatics. Dual study program alongside full-time role at SYMESTIC.

Areas of expertise

Cloud-native MES architecture, Microsoft Azure, microservice architecture, OPC UA, MQTT, IoT gateway development, edge computing, ISA-95 integration architecture, industrial connectivity, brownfield machine integration, REST APIs, C#/.NET, SQL, Docker/Kubernetes, real-time data processing, IT/OT convergence.

On the SYMESTIC Blog

I write about the technical topics behind a modern MES: cloud architectures vs. on-premise, machine connectivity via OPC UA and digital I/O gateways, ISA-95 integration architecture, edge computing, and the role of AI in production control. From the perspective of someone who builds these systems – not someone who sells them.

Contact

Email: mark.kobbert@symestic.com