Rockwell Automation has introduced the first capability of its edge strategy with FactoryTalk Edge Gateway to simplify and accelerate IT/OT convergence.
"Industrial enterprises struggle to aggregate operational data from heterogeneous sources and add relevant context from the source-such as process conditions, time stamps, machine states and other production states-to the IT layer," said a company spokesperson. "This prevents them from uncovering potentially game-changing insights at the enterprise level. While traditional gateway solutions fail to address these important challenges, FactoryTalk Edge Gateway goes a step above to not only enrich OT data with critical context where it matters the most-at the edge-but also delivers it in a flexible common information model to IT applications, so that industrial enterprises can derive critical insights for a competitive edge."
FactoryTalk Edge Gateway is an important foundation of a broader edge platform offering that will include elements of pre-built data analytics models, machine learning, tailored applications and scalable compute. It is the latest addition to the FactoryTalk Analytics suite offering that addresses diverse industries and IIoT use cases. FactoryTalk Edge Gateway is also a key pillar in Rockwell Automation's strategy to accelerate digital agility across the industrial devices to cloud spectrum with partnerships, including PTC and Microsoft.
"Today, industrial facilities are made up of heterogeneous systems and devices that generate voluminous data at very high speeds-resulting in significant data silos," said the spokesperson. "Connecting the dots across these industrial data silos by building relevant OT data context is critical for generating higher value actionable insights. Furthermore, unless the industrial OT data is packaged into a logical data model that both IT and OT applications can understand, IT/OT convergence remains a farfetched prospect."
FactoryTalk Edge Gateway's data management capabilities result in up to 70% reduction in analytics data preparation efforts for data scientists or analysts, while providing higher quality OT data, according to the company. The underlying common information data model is orchestrated by the Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk Smart Object capability and can be efficiently mapped to on-premises or cloud applications to generate predictive insights across the enterprise. FactoryTalk Edge Gateway is designed to integrate with ecosystem solutions like Microsoft Azure and FactoryTalk InnovationSuite, powered by PTC, and a variety of big data, IIoT and cloud applications.
For more information contact:
Rockwell Automation, Inc.
www.rockwellautomation.com