Industrial automation company Rockwell Automation, Inc. has delivered an intelligent edge management and orchestration platform with an edge application ecosystem. In effect, the company accelerates digital transformation to industrial customers by providing an ecosystem based on zero trust security and open industry standards.

As industrial manufacturers pursue digital transformation, they are looking to scale digital transformation initiatives via innovations in AI, analytics, MES systems, etc. Hence, tapping real-time intelligence closer to the source of industrial data.

This has created pain points around application latency, device management, and security issues – underscoring the need for a balanced edge to cloud deployment. Industrial Transformation (IX) leaders need an end-to-end, intelligent edge management solution to execute a robust edge computing strategy. This maximizes overall deployment success, control devices from anywhere, and manage app deployment on devices – while improving security posture.

Scales Up Digital Transformation

Further enriching the current Rockwell edge offerings – FactoryTalk® Edge Gateway™ and ASEM™ industrial computers – FactoryTalk® Edge™ is a SaaS solution for intelligent, centralized edge management and orchestration. Accessible from anywhere, FactoryTalk Edge is an essential infrastructure layer to realize higher productivity and efficiency while managing edge devices and app deployment from a single pane of glass. Furthermore, with superior security posture built on a zero-trust model, it provides flexibility for complex future use cases and catering to any hardware or cloud provider.

In addition, the solution includes FactoryTalk Edge Gateway edge app and empowers customers to contextualize and package industrial data at high speed into flexible information models.

FactoryTalk Edge can suit pre-certified ASEM VersaView® 6300B edge compute nodes, accelerating deployment speed.

“As our customers are building towards the Connected Enterprise Production System, they are finding it hard to get data out of silos, manage distributed compute surfaces, and deploy software quickly,” says Brian Shepherd, senior vice president, Software & Control at Rockwell Automation.

In addition, Shepherd said, “By combining our hardware with edge orchestration capabilities and making it easy to deploy applications to the edge, we expect our customer to scale their digital transformation initiatives faster and gain greater value from their edge applications.”

Chantal Polsonetti, VP Advisory Services, from ARC Advisory Group says, “As industrial organizations apply various technologies to solve edge use cases and scale, one aspect will stand out: the need for a secure, cost-effective edge infrastructure capable of managing an increasing number of distributed devices at scale. As the universe of industrial use cases continues to expand, OEMs, solution providers, and end customers are quickly realizing the need for this type of foundational infrastructure solution to enable edge implementation and management at different plant sites. FactoryTalk Edge gives them one solution to operate and scale their DX initiatives at the edge so their time can be spent on solving the next big problem.”