As the demands of companies in the industrial sector become increasingly complex, edge computing has emerged as a clear solution to move away from outdated systems without disrupting operations.
The industrial sector is advancing towards digitalization, with more companies seeking tools and technologies to help optimize operations. However, even as digital transformation has begun, many companies in the industrial field still rely on traditional, often outdated, custom-built solutions to run their monitoring and control systems. This harmful dependence on increasingly obsolete and rigid software architectures is not easy to break, for various reasons. Many companies find that the computing infrastructure they use has long been surpassed by new technologies.
The challenge for these companies in the industrial sector is that replacing this infrastructure is both expensive and requires more support, with upgrades often resulting in resource-wasting downtime that only increases costs. While the approach of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is tempting, the reality is that reliance on outdated, unsupported systems is unsustainable for long-term operations and business success.
Edge computing platforms provide a very effective solution to overcome these challenges, bringing modern features such as built-in fault tolerance, proactive health monitoring, and simplified maintenance. Besides being crucial for business-critical data and processes in monitoring and control, edge computing has become key for supply chain, manufacturing execution, batch management, asset performance management, and access control. With this in mind, let’s look at some of the benefits that adopting edge computing can bring.
In any company, reliability is critical to all aspects of operations—especially in industrial environments that may cover vast and remote areas. Companies in the industrial sector understand the necessity of modernization, but any upgrades or changes need to be executed swiftly and restored quickly. Any downtime, outages, or interruptions can incur significant costs and cause considerable product loss in manufacturing environments. However, disruption does not just mean monetary or product loss. It can also bring regulatory and compliance issues, where outages may result in the loss of critical reporting data, or even worse—safety and environmental issues in complex manufacturing environments such as oil and gas.
For companies in the industrial sector, the stakes are so high that any digital transformation project must ensure that downtime becomes a thing of the past. By integrating edge computing, these companies can leverage built-in fault tolerance to run their most critical applications while avoiding any disruptive downtime. In modern edge computing platforms, fault tolerance is out-of-the-box, easy to integrate into the computing infrastructure, and operational without any additional scripting.
Edge computing is also transforming retail supply chains, for example, by integrating inventory and warehouse systems and analyzing customer-facing platforms like in-store POS and e-commerce websites to enhance insights into purchasing trends and loss prevention. This optimization improves key KPIs such as On-Time In-Full (OTIF) and inventory turnover rates, thereby enhancing overall customer experience and business performance.
The roles and responsibilities of IT and OT have evolved in sync with the changes seen in the industrial industry. In recent years, there has been an increased frequency of collaboration between the two teams or working with System Integrators (SIs). However, even as the two converge, challenges brought on by IT personnel shortages and restrictions place immense pressure on OT teams, who are not only tasked with maintaining existing infrastructure but also responsible for IT duties.
Edge computing can help achieve seamless integration between IT and OT. By upgrading their infrastructure, companies can achieve a win-win scenario that meets both IT and OT functional requirements, linking their shared goals for application availability and security. This integration is made possible because edge computing tools empower OT teams to utilize the software they rely on while also providing the IT side with the familiarity they need to operate more effectively.
Increasing Power While Reducing Operational Footprint
Companies in the industrial sector rely on software and tools that need to process and manage large amounts of data in real time. However, operating at such scale, across remote and distant locations, may mean an increasing number of applications and hardware. As the number of servers and applications grows, OT teams face a real challenge in keeping up with developments. Now, as organizations prioritize modernization initiatives like upgrading infrastructure, reducing the overall operational footprint has become essential for long-term sustainability.
Edge computing solutions provide OT teams with a way to run application virtualization, consolidating multiple servers onto a single platform while running multiple software applications simultaneously. Leveraging edge computing to consolidate the number of technologies involved helps alleviate the pressure on OT teams by simplifying complexity, streamlining management, and shrinking the organization’s overall footprint. It also makes supporting remote sites easier and faster, as edge computing platforms allow users to monitor these locations from a centralized control center.
The Next Generation of Digital Transformation Relies on Edge Computing
Moving away from traditional tools, software, and infrastructure used to run critical operations like monitoring is not simple—but it is vital to advancing any digital transformation journey. As the demands of companies in the industrial sector become increasingly complex, edge computing has become a clear solution to move away from outdated systems without disrupting operations. With edge computing technology, companies can enhance the critical support capabilities of IT and OT teams, reduce operational footprint and costs, and inject reliability and dependability into operations that are often subject to strict regulation.
(Source: Enterprise Network D1Net)
