As industrial professionals know, enterprise computing is undergoing a major shift. By 2022, according to Gartner, 50% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud. That roughly doubles today’s figure.
This transformation is especially evident in the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
In today’s IIoT environment, devices, sensors, and gateways are rapidly proliferating at the “edge” remote from the data center. That creates latency and connectivity concerns between collection points and the central computing center. If data from a hydroelectric turbine is late reaching the data center’s SCADA system, for example, you risk efficiency and safety.
Tech Expo North America
While at the 2017 IoT Tech Expo North America, where we introduced our plans for an edge-specific solution – we explained how our new edge offering performs some computing at the edge itself. By gathering and integrating basic data at remote sites, this solution lightens the burden on the communications network and central systems. Stratus executives who presented at the conference described two important capabilities of this strategy:
Simplicity: “At the edge, it’s crucial to remove human error from the process,” said Jason Andersen, Vice President, Business Line Management at Stratus Technologies. “When you place complex infrastructure in remote locations, you may not have the right skill sets onsite, or even people there at all.” That’s where Stratus’ decades of reliable hands-off computing comes into play. Our flagship ftServer, now in its ninth generation, set the industry standard for simple, zero-touch remote care, predictive management, and reliability as a service (RAS). Infusing our edge devices with this same expertise ensures that remote processors operate flawlessly.
Security: According to the Vodafone IoT Barometer 2017/18, security is the single largest barrier to adopting IoT. “When we talk to our customers, they tell us they are overwhelmed with the prospect of choosing and managing a security technology for their specific applications,” explained Oliver Gruner, Stratus Director of IoT Business Solutions. Fortunately, Stratus already provides predictive health monitoring of servers, which will be expanded to provide security-as-a-service for edge gateways and processors. The objective: ensure that data remains invulnerable and private throughout its collection and transmission.
As Gruner explained at this years Tech Expo North America, “We have been providing edge compute systems for over 35 years in always-on industries. It’s a natural step to support our customers with the new devices they need for IIoT success.”
Want to learn if now is the time to really focus on the Edge? Check out the NEW Market Report that answers that question…and more.
