by Gary Mintchell | Oct 7, 2025 | Edge, Networking, News
The post before this one looked at a survey done on usage of private 5G and edge networks. This news looks at a test bed in Switzerland to allow startups and nonprofits to try out a network without incurring infrastructure costs. Like most test beds, the work strives to encourage innovation within an ecosystem. This one focusing on energy, mobility, health, and manufacturing.
Nokia, together with Datwyler IT Infra, Intel, and the Switzerland Innovation Park Biel/Bienne (SIPBB), unveiled a pioneering hub for startups and nonprofits to accelerate industrial digitalization through advanced private 5G and AI-powered edge solutions. This initiative will drive breakthrough innovations in efficiency, safety, and sustainability across key industries such as health, mobility, energy, and manufacturing.
At SIPBB, innovators will have access to a full-scale deployment environment offering private 5G connectivity. The infrastructure includes Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) private wireless networks, MX Industrial Edge (MXIE), and future-ready applications such as Nokia MX Workmate, the industry’s first OT-compliant Gen AI solution for connected workers. These technologies, alongside Intel Xeon Scalable processors and edge AI capabilities, such as visual positioning and object detection, provide a real-world testbed open to nonprofit research and startup collaboration without the usual cost or deployment challenges.
The new trial site enables several industrial use cases, including predictive maintenance powered by real-time analytics to minimize downtime and material waste, push-to-talk and video communication tools to keep teams connected without on-site travel, and AI-enhanced safety monitoring to improve situational awareness and worker safety. Energy-efficient automation ensures consistent productivity with reduced environmental impact. Additionally, the site features natural human-machine interaction through Gen AI-driven digital assistants, allowing workers to communicate with machines using intuitive, conversational language.
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by Gary Mintchell | Oct 7, 2025 | Edge, Networking
Conflicting reports have come my way regarding how private wireless, especially 5G, have penetrated manufacturing sites and how useful they have been coordinating with edge devices. Nokia have release the results of a study completed with GlobalData. The study reveals surge of ROI and AI-enabled use cases with on-premise edge and private wireless.
In brief
- 87% of enterprises adopting private wireless and on-premise edge saw ROI in one year.
- 81% of enterprises found setup costs lower than other options and 86% reported reduced ongoing costs.
- 94% of industrial enterprises deployed edge with private wireless that support AI-driven applications in 70% of the cases.
- 94% of industries reduced carbon emissions—41% by over 20%—and 89% reported energy savings.
The report draws on insights from 115 industrial enterprises across manufacturing, energy, logistics, mining, and transportation in Australia, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and United States.
David de Lancellotti, Vice President of Enterprise Campus Edge Sales at Nokia, says: “Nokia and Global Data’s latest research helps leaders build strong business cases for digitalization by showing how private wireless and on-premise edge not only reduce costs but also accelerate scalable transformation with measurable improvements in worker safety, productivity, security and environmental impact.”
AI’s potential in industrial settings hinges on access to high-quality, real-time data; 94% of industrial enterprises have deployed on-premise edge technology alongside private wireless. This combination enables secure, low-latency connectivity in complex environments and pervasive sensor coverage, even in hard-to-reach areas, supporting AI-driven use cases like predictive maintenance, real-time monitoring, and digital twins in 70% of surveyed enterprises.
BASF, a leading chemical company, deployed Nokia private wireless at its Antwerp facility to advance its digitalization strategy and enable reliable, high-performance connectivity across its six-square-kilometer premises. The private network supports AI- and sensor-driven use cases like real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance, enhances automation and efficiency, improves worker safety, and reduces environmental impact.
Steven Werbrouck, Expert Network Connectivity at BASF, says: Private 5G has been a game changer for BASF Antwerp. We’re unlocking automation, strengthening occupational safety, accelerating innovation, and meeting ROI targets in just two years. We have become a front-runner for the wider group with learnings that will deliver value at multiple BASF group locations.”
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by Gary Mintchell | May 15, 2025 | Edge
Apparently it’s still all happening at the Edge (apologies to Paul Simon’s Zoo). This concept has always somewhat puzzled me given that I began implementing computers on the factory floor in the mid-80s to collect, sort, and publish manufacturing data. I guess just more sophisticated compute and superior networking plus a lot of marketing.
At any rate, it is happening at the edge. I was introduced to ZEDEDA (I still hate the all-caps thing introduced by marketers in order to shout out their name) five or six years ago by someone I knew from Dell. The company’s products and services do meet the criteria of better compute and superior connectivity. This news came last week.
ZEDEDA, the leader in edge management and orchestration, announced that A.P. Moller – Maersk (Maersk) has selected ZEDEDA as a key technology provider enabling its next-generation IoT connectivity platform, One Wireless. The ZEDEDA edge computing platform enables Maersk to orchestrate the OneWireless solution across its fleet, improving operational efficiency.
“With our next-generation connectivity platform, we will be able to offer our customers notable benefits, including real-time cargo tracking, enhanced supply chain visibility, and improved operational efficiency. This platform is designed to support thousands of IoT devices, ensuring optimal performance for reefer tracking and fleet IoT,” says Kjeld Dittmann, Head of Vessel & Cargo Connectivity at Maersk.
I wonder how all this is faring right now given the world-wide shipping uncertainty due to Trump’s tariffs.
ZEDEDA’s edge computing platform allows Maersk to address inherent challenges in the maritime industry such as deploying any application on any edge device in remote locations, with intermittent connectivity, and lack of a skilled IT workforce on-board. With ZEDEDA, Maersk can deploy and manage any future on-board applications over the air from a central controller.
The OneWireless platform is a single, unified network designed to support multiple wireless technologies (NB-IoT, Cat-M, and LTE broadband) offering scalability, security, and flexibility, enabling Maersk customers to seamlessly integrate their IoT devices and services. The solution is designed for seamless interoperability between private and public networks, ensuring Maersk customers’ cargo is reliably monitored whether at sea, in port, or on land, thus enabling BYOIoT (Bring Your Own IoT) solutions based on standards for customers.
Roll-out of the solution has begun and deployment across all 450 vessels in scope is expected to be completed by Q1 2026.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 28, 2025 | Cloud, Edge, Generative AI
The third of Siemens pre-Hannover news releases concerns Xcelerator Edge with Microsoft Azure IoT Operations.
- Siemens Industrial Edge works seamlessly with Microsoft Azure IoT Operations, making OT and IT data planes fully interoperable for manufacturing
- Edge and cloud data integration enables adaptive production through AI- and digital-twin-powered solutions
- Industrial customers benefit from improved machine performance, product quality and reduced machine maintenance
Siemens announces an extended collaboration with Microsoft in the context of Siemens Xcelerator, Siemens’ open digital business platform, to simplify the integration of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) for enterprise customers. By combining Siemens Industrial Edge with Microsoft Azure IoT Operations, customers will benefit from complementary solutions that enable a seamless flow of data from production lines to the edge and to the cloud. This edge-to-cloud data integration enables AI- and digital-twin-powered solutions to improve machine performance, product quality, and reduce machine maintenance.
A core component of the Azure adaptive cloud approach, Azure IoT Operations is designed to seamlessly integrate on-premises industrial edge solutions, like Siemens Industrial Edge, with the cloud, ensuring a continuous flow of data for smarter operations.
In this way, the powerful OT data plane provided by Siemens Industrial Edge works easily with Azure IoT Operations, to create an interoperable OT and IT data plane for manufacturing. The data layer from Siemens Industrial Edge effectively addresses mission-critical production applications such as virtualized control, low-latency closed-loop AI, executable digital twins, or production line-level analytics. It allows manufacturers to deploy responsive, reliable, flexible and secure applications to optimize their operations, reduce costs, and increase uptime and quality. By coupling with Azure IoT Operations, industrial producers can easily leverage this OT data in cloud-based, data-driven use cases to optimize production across sites and gain insights from advanced analytics.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 17, 2025 | Edge
Here’s a partnership of two companies who like to “all caps” their names so that they jump out at you on the page. This news concerns extension of EdgeAI
ZEDEDA has unveiled expanded support for NVIDIA’s edge AI platform, introducing enhanced integration with NVIDIA Jetson systems, NGC catalog and the TAO toolkit.
This comprehensive integration provides enterprises with a complete workflow for deploying, securing and managing AI models at the edge, enabling faster innovation while ensuring operational reliability. The NGC catalog serves as NVIDIA’s repository for GPU-optimized AI models, while the TAO toolkit enables the adaptation of AI models for edge environments. ZEDEDA now seamlessly enables users to pull models from the NGC catalog, optimize those models via the TAO toolkit, and deploy and manage these via ZEDEDA’s secure edge computing platform.
Key innovations include:
- NVIDIA NGC Catalog Integration: Direct CLI integration enables seamless deployment of AI models from NGC Catalog to edge nodes, dramatically simplifying the model deployment workflow
- TAO Toolkit Optimization: Native support for NVIDIA’s TAO toolkit allows enterprises to optimize models specifically for edge deployment on Jetson systems, improving performance and efficiency
- Zero-Touch Edge Management: Automated deployment and management capabilities scale to tens of thousands of nodes, enabling rapid AI innovation without increasing operational overhead
- Advanced Observability: Built-in Grafana and Prometheus integration with extensible APIs provides comprehensive visibility into AI model performance and health at the edge
- Native Support for NVIDIA Jetson GPUs: ZEDEDA’s EVE OS provides native support for NVIDIA Jetson GPUs, including Orin NX and AGX, enabling seamless AI deployment. By utilizing ZEDEDA Marketplace models optimized with TensorRT and leveraging EVE OS for GPU acceleration, edge AI performance is significantly enhanced.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 21, 2025 | Edge, Industrial Computers
We inhabit the early days of figuring out not only which AI (machine learning, large language models, voice, etc.) we need to deploy but also how to deploy it. Both remote servers (the cloud) and local edge servers have advantages and disadvantages.
Meanwhile, technology developers are busily devising upgrades to their systems that will enable those deployments.
This news comes from OnLogic, an edge computing technology developer.
OnLogic has launched the Axial AX300, a customizable edge server.
The company details a few advantages to local deployment.
The Axial AX300 empowers organizations to seamlessly move computing resources closer to the data source, providing significant advantages in performance, latency, operational efficiency and total cost of ownership over cloud-based data management. With its robust design, flexible configuration options, and advanced security features, the Axial AX300 is the ideal platform.
Features include:
- AI/ML inference and training: Leveraging the power of AI/ML at the edge for real-time insights, predictive maintenance, and improved decision-making.
- Data analytics: Processing and analyzing data generated by IoT devices and sensors in real-time to improve operational efficiency.
- Virtualization: Consolidating multiple workloads onto a single server, optimizing resource utilization and simplifying deployment and management.
Specs:
- Powered by up to two 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors.
- Up to 7x single-slot or 4x dual-slot GPUs, enabling up to 5864 TOPS of AI performance. In addition a wide range of memory and storage options are available, accommodating a host of data management and analytics needs.
- Built-in security features such as locking front bezels, rear port-blocking attachments, and FIPS security level 1 and 2 compliance help protect valuable on-site data from tampering or intrusion. Onboard Intel Trust Domain Extensions (Intel TDX) offer increased confidentiality at the virtual machine (VM) level, while Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) provide what Intel calls the most researched, updated, and comprehensive confidential computing technology in data centers on the market today.
- The Axial AX300 was engineered to thrive where data-center servers might struggle. Advanced dust filtration, hot-swappable fans, and robust thermal management help to ensure maximum availability.
- Shallow-depth 3U form factor. The system can also be installed in a tower orientation or wall-mounted. A license-fee free BMC enables remote monitoring and simplifies server management and maintenance.
- Leverage the company’s strong relationships with software providers including Avassa, AWS, Nodeweaver, Red Hat, Viso, ZEDEDA and many others to architect the ideal data management, virtualization, or AI solution for their specific needs.
