Internet of Things (IoT) means tens of billions of devices across various connection and technologies. A recent survey by MachNation predicts IoT edge revenues to increase 81 percent between 2017 -2018. Orchestration of such an ecosystem is critical. To address these challenges, ioTium has introduced OT-Edge, which takes Kubernetes to fit the bill.
As an edge-cloud infrastructure it is built on remotely managed Kubernetes. The OT-Edge platform is designed for brownfield industrial and manufacturing environments to embrace the benefits of Industry 4.0.
Ron Victor, Founder & CEO, ioTium explains that the OT-Edge platform allows companies to better manage data that must remain on premises due to compliance, security, or latency reasons. The platform can also be remotely managed, which removes the need to have IT resources on site.
The platform relies on a physical box that is deployed on site and can be plugged into legacy equipment. The ioTium box then become the infrastructure transport layer. The technology uses microservices based on container applications to decouple application development from deployment. This also removes the need for an organisation to use a specific software-development kit (SDK) from a single vendor.
With this they have been able to create the ability to manage application pods remotely for IIoT at scale. He explained that opex savings begins at deployment by not having to send out a “Cisco-trained technician” to help with the installation. From that point, customers can manage updates remotely, again saving costs, and can then move on installing other cost-saving measures.