Important Questions to Ask Your Edge Computing Provider

Everyone has heard about the “cloud.” But how much do you know about Edge computing?

What is Edge computing?
 
A distributed computing paradigm, the Edge computing is where industrial data is processed close to the asset, rather than moving data from the asset’s network to be computed in a centralized environment. Because Edge technology is so critical to industrial software applications, there are important considerations that impact the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and capabilities of connected IIoT devices.
 
 
As companies incorporate this mission-critical technology into their operations, the following critical considerations should be taken into account.

What questions should you ask an Edge Computing provider?
 
It is possible to build an Edge computing solution by yourself, but at what cost? Again, time-to-market matters. Most cloud vendors provide the tools to build an Edge solution, but the cost, time, skills and expertise to build, grow and maintain an Edge management solution needs to be checked. Often, it’s simpler, less costly and easier to get a third-party Edge solution.
 
Here are some important points to assess:

Protect Edge Computing devices from cyber threats

For industrial organizations, security is, and should be, top-of-mind. While the degree of concern may vary depending on whether assets are transporting people or generating energy, when it comes to assets, you cannot afford to have them impacted by a security threat.

The notion of security, from an embedded system, of Edge devices is very different from cloud security. In the cloud, everything is centralized, so you have full control of all aspects of security. On the other hand, once a device is deployed in the field, it needs to run securely for an extended period, often with limited ability to apply software updates to the Edge technology.

This means Edge software should employ the latest in cyber security approaches. Make sure that your vendor ensures that Edge devices are protected by inquiring about the techniques used to protect devices. Consider a cyber security threat model first, and then every component should be implemented with that threat model as a frame.

What to look for in an Edge Computing Solution Provider

The IoT comes with the promise of connecting millions of devices to be able to gather information, as well as remotely control those devices. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has more use-cases, but the fundamental premise behind the technology is the same as IoT. When you’re choosing an Edge provider, it’s important to consider the number of Edge devices in use today, tomorrow and five to 10 years down the road.

An Edge provider must provide a platform that supports a company’s needs for transitioning to Edge, as well as managing a fleet size of more than 100,000 devices. This is the kind of scale journey a company may face to upgrade its platform to overcome ongoing challenges.

Not only should the Edge management platform have the ability to manage a large fleet of devices, but it should also provide a degree of automation in fleet management such that it doesn’t impact OpEx for device management.

Edge computing works with Cloud computing, not against

Cloud as a technology is more mature than IIoT or Edge. Most organizations have already chosen cloud vendors or are in the process of doing so. More often than not, companies might need their Edge solution to work seamlessly with more than one public cloud or even on-premise for an offline use case.

Flexibility not only applies to the Edge device and its ability to send industrial data to multiple clouds, but also to an Edge management application’s ability to run and manage devices from a choice of cloud or on-premise environments. It is important that any Edge solution is flexible enough to work with various cloud and on-premise solutions, whether within the organization or at the end-customer’s facility.

An Edge solution should not lock you in with a cloud, rather it should work with all popular clouds as well as on-prem solutions.

Time to Value is important

In industrial business, time-to-market matters. Companies today simply cannot have operational throughput impacted by standing up new technology. You should be able to purchase an IIoT Edge device, plug it to the network, securely connect it to the cloud and start managing machines.

Most IIoT solutions require companies to build the IIoT device from platform vendor-specific SDKs, therefore increasing time-to-market. Understanding the time commitment required when you add devices is an important consideration to your business.

Some solutions are more turnkey. More mature solution providers have engaged with an ecosystem of device manufacturers to build an extensibility framework that allows companies to manage all aspects of the device, including the operating system remotely.

Is the solution robust online and offline?

Often in the industrial world, regulations or operations require assets to be disconnected. For example, in a power plant, a control network is isolated to prevent foreign attack and in the case of locomotives, they can only be connected intermittently, when they are in the yard.

Edge technology has to be able to adapt to these environments and perform operations with the same degree of reliability as with connected mode. In some cases, this could mean Edge being capable of having the control logic in case of an event while disconnected, or simply have the store and forward capability while disconnected.

Most importantly, the Edge should have the capability to resume and sync status when it is connected to the cloud after disconnection. Companies need to ask a potential solution provider about deployment scenarios where the IIoT Edge devices remain entirely or intermittently disconnected and need to be operated in an off-line mode with no cloud connectivity.
By asking the Edge vendor about these important architecture considerations, you will ensure you have an Edge stack which can be used quickly and securely to develop and deploy Edge applications at scale.

Using Edge computing to reduce costs
 
GE Vernova’s Gas Power Controls uses our Edge technologies Life Monitoring application, which performs key life expectancy calculations to estimate life consumption of HRSG components that are often subjected to significant operating cycles, thermal transients, long-term high temperature operation and condensate build up, and more, resulting in fatigue and creep of critical components. The application runs on top of GE Vernova’s Edge platform and uses Proficy Historian Edge for time-series data storage at the edge. It is deployed globally in conjunction with both GE Vernova and non-GE HRSGs, improving performance and reducing costs.
 
Edge computing to assist a remote workforce
 
GE Vernova’s Edge software eliminated a huge data ingestion barrier and allowed a North American energy company to more than double the collected tag volume per monitored site.  The GE Vernova Professional Services team is doing an in-place upgrade of the fleet, minimizing downtime, enabling data collection growth, and removing migration barriers. The greater data collection rates will enhance outage optimization planning and reduce downtime.
 
Each site takes just 15 minutes on average to migrate from the legacy technology to the GE Vernova software, and GE Vernova plans to deploy it across all 28 power generation systems as the project extends to wind assets. The cloud administration capabilities of the GE Vernova collection system also helped offset the strain of a remote workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
In the two examples above, both companies were able to achieve a higher ROI, leverage the security features architected into GE Vernova’s Edge platform and Proficy Historian Edge, manage devices at scale, flexibly apply their edge solutions and leverage turnkey and offline capabilities by consuming the software as a baseline for edge computing and data ingestion scenarios respectively.