Manufacturers are expected to react promptly to customer requests by making available custom products and services on a global scale. Furthermore, in the case of time sensitive applications data collected from a wide range of devices has to be processed immediately to support fast decision-making. Intelligent edge computing solutions provide this on site, without having to send all the data from the equipment of the plant to the cloud for processing.

Sending sensitive data to the cloud is a risk from the perspective of both data and plant equipment. Multiple layers of security need to be implemented to ensure that data is securely transmitted from plant equipment to the cloud. Data processing using edge computing devices helps to prevent data security incidents and provides a better response time.

Edge computing platforms enable remote sites to decrease downtime and operate independently when the central system is unavailable. For example, if the cloud system is unavailable due to a network connection failure sites can continue to process and analyse data using on site processing capacities. Once the connection is re-established processed data can be sent to the cloud for long-term storage.

The transfer of large quantities of data directly to cloud servers can generate excessive costs. Transferring data on a daily basis can generate unsustainable costs in the long run.

Manufacturers seek optimized IT solutions for their industrial automatization applications that enable intelligent processing of large quantities of data collected from sensors and plant monitors so that only critical and pre-processed, summarized data is sent to the cloud. Such solutions are based on small, resilient, industrial grade, small energy consumption, ARM-based computers that make edge computing more reliable and cost effective.