Industrial IoT Edge

Industrial IoT Edge Solutions Struggle to Scale While Hyperscalers Loom

The edge of industrial internet-enabled architectures plays a critical role in determining the success of digital transformation strategies.  Initially focused on delivering timely, clean data to cloud-based applications, the role of the edge continues to escalate as issues with latency, security, and distrust of off-prem, typically cloud-based, execution necessitate that the edge take on a more prominent role.

Cloud-based solutions need data from connected assets at the edge in order to maximize digital transformation efforts, driving interest from both IT and OT alike.  The pace of scaling remains a market challenge, however.  OEM markets for connected end products have scaled at a slower than anticipated pace, while end customers in connected operations applications have ramped up their PoCs at a slow rate, including due to challenges faced when transitioning from pilots to production.  Other impediments to date include security concerns, timeline for adoption of cloud-native technology at the edge, and lingering doubts in some corners as to the true edge value proposition.

Despite these findings, the long-term value proposition for industrial IoT edge solutions remains solid.  Whether together with cloud-based solutions or executed solely on-prem, edge solutions can help reduce cost, increase revenue, or achieve product and service innovation via connecting operations, products, and/or services.  Escalating requirements for edge-to-cloud connectivity, as well as compute power and storage to serve edge computing requirements, are driving further evolution.

Enterprise Cloud Providers Target the Industrial IoT Edge 

As cloud-based enterprise applications have become the norm, cloud solutions are extending to the edge to access their source data and fulfill their digital transformation value proposition.  This is particularly evident in AI, ML, and video analytics applications, where edge capabilities promise significant value in both data preprocessing and local execution of cloud-trained models.  Cloud providers are adding edge functionality and associated services that are a natural extension of their core capabilities in areas such as device management and security. 

Dedicated edge solutions from outside the enterprise cloud realm differentiate themselves on ability to generate quicker time to value and overcome real deficiencies when extending the cloud to endpoint devices.  These deficiencies include latency of edge to cloud communications and security and operational concerns regarding sending data to and from off-prem components of the architecture.  Industrial IoT edge solutions provide support for the OT environment in areas such as built-in support for northbound and southbound connectivity, easy-to-use industrial development and visualization tools, and domain-specific vertical architectures, while integrating the cloud component for data plumbing, compute, and store infrastructure.