Rockwell Automation has unveiled a new intelligent edge management and orchestration platform equipped with an edge application ecosystem that would accelerate digital transformation for customers in the industrial manufacturing space.
Developed based on zero-trust security and open industry standards, FactoryTalk Edge is designed to serve as an essential infrastructure layer that would enable higher productivity and efficiency while managing edge devices and app deployment from a single pane of glass.
In a press release, Rockwell said the software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution offers flexibility for complex future cases and caters to any hardware or cloud provider.
The solution is intended to cater to industrial manufacturers that seek to scale digital transformation initiatives via innovations in artificial intelligence, analytics, and manufacturing execution systems.
Manufacturers are currently faced with challenges around application latency, device management, and security issues as they seek access to real-time intelligence that is closer to the source of industrial data.
This creates the need for a balanced edge to cloud deployment, Rockwell said.
“Industrial Transformation (IX) leaders need an end-to-end, intelligent edge management solution to execute a robust edge computing strategy that can maximize overall deployment success, control devices from anywhere, and manage app deployment on devices – while improving security posture,” the company said in its statement.
FactoryTalk Edge Gateway edge app is also made accessible to customers, empowering them to contextualise and package industrial data at high speed into flexible information models.
The SaaS solution can be deployed on 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,” said Brian Shepherd, senior vice president for software and control at Rockwell Automation.
“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.”
