OSIsoft Launches Edge Data Store as Part of Its Pervasive Data Collection Strategy

In brief: IIoT edge software allows industrial organizations to store and send data from remote assets to PI Server or OSIsoft Cloud Services for full edge-to-cloud connectivity.

The spring “conference season” has either been cancelled or gone virtual. The first virtual conference of the season for me was OSIsoft PI World. I’ve made the trip to San Francisco a couple of times to be there in person, but this year I sat in my office with headphones firmly affixed to my ears.

The “Edge” has been a hot topic for a few years now—mostly from the IT-oriented technology providers that I follow. OSIsoft’s PI is the ubiquitous “system of record” for a huge percentage of the industrial world. This historian database is often used in platforms for moving data from the plant to the enterprise. PI is the bridging step in most cases. The Edge, in our industrial case, often refers to a device serving as a data concentrator from physical devices in the plant or in the field and then as a gateway serving the data to the cloud or to the enterprise.

At the conference, OSIsoft announced general availability of Edge Data Store. With Edge Data Store, customers can remotely monitor critical assets to improve uptime, while minimizing the costs and safety risks associated with manual, in-person inspections.

Edge Data Store is Industrial IoT (IIoT) software that allows operators to collect, store, and access data from assets and sensors in remote environments. Remote edge data can now be easily collected and integrated with primary control network data to create a holistic view of industrial operations. OSIsoft’s customers and partners have deployed Edge Data Store in a variety of settings, including on hardened gateways to monitor personnel safety at sea, track performance of pumps in the field, and optimize the efficiency of large-scale battery solutions around the globe.

To improve the safety of personnel who must work in the dynamic, dangerous environment of the drill floor on offshore rigs, Edge Data Store pilot customer Rolloos turned its CCTV technology into a comprehensive detection system that could track personnel as they entered active zones. Through the Edge Data Store pilot, Rolloos ensured that all data was accessible by offshore operators for immediate decision support and could be streamed onshore for further retrospective analysis.

“We can actually track people from video and can combine that with the output from the equipment data to improve efficiency even more. Then, we can stream it back to shore using the Edge Data Store,” said Martijn Handels, director at Rolloos.

Easy, reliable access to edge data has enabled real-time monitoring of personnel and equipment to improve both employee safety and overall process performance.


“Our pervasive data collection strategy, with support for over 450 industrial protocols, has been utilized by thousands of customers, and we’re supplementing these capabilities with edge connectivity,” said Chris Felts, senior strategic product manager for OSIsoft. “Edge Data Store is a major step toward helping industrial customers capitalize on the promise of IoT and ubiquitous sensing. By supporting both edge to on-premises and edge to cloud data patterns, Edge Data Store provides an easy way for customers to improve operations with full end-to-end visibility.”

Because Edge Data Store shares the same data storage and API technologies as OSIsoft Cloud Services, custom applications developed for the cloud can be used at the edge and vice versa.

The Edge Data Challenge

Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 initiatives continue to transform critical operations with low-cost sensors and solutions. However, data from remote operations has remained isolated due to poor network connectivity, the difficulty of developing edge solutions that meet both the high standard of critical operations data management, and strict hardware requirements of rugged or remote devices. Valuable remote data is often stranded beyond the reach of automation systems, held up by unreliable network conditions. Edge Data Store overcomes these challenges; the software self-heals after hard reboots from power outages and runs on low-cost, rugged devices with Windows or Linux operating systems.

Edge Data Store provides no-code connectivity to common industrial protocols and can expose the data for use by field technicians or analytics applications. In addition to facing extended loss of connectivity, remote areas are often subject to limited connectivity, where data transfer costs are closely monitored.

For example, snow on a satellite dish could mean that a remote location is disconnected for days at a time, previously leading to data loss or requiring personnel to drive to the asset in harsh conditions. Edge Data Store delivers robust local storage and simple configuration options to optimize bandwidth and send edge data to PI Server or OSIsoft Cloud Services, allowing corporate users to augment existing data sets and drive further analysis.

“Edge technology simultaneously drives centralized knowledge and distributed decision making,” said OSIsoft President Michael Siemer. “For 40 years, OSIsoft has pushed the boundaries of real-time, high fidelity operations data. Edge technologies decentralize information access and empower essential employees to make local decisions for safer, smarter operations.”

Secure Remote Service for the IIoT Age

The age of the Industrial Internet of Things opens a better pathway for OEMs to provide enhanced remote service. However, words such as “Internet” and “remote” conjure visions of cybersecurity holes in the minds of IT professionals.

It seems as if every few months for years as I scanned my contact list looking for someone, I’d see the card for Spencer Cramer, founder and CEO of ei3 and wonder what he was up to. Then a couple of weeks ago I heard from Mark Fondl, an industry friend over many years, who told me I needed to talk with Cramer and he set up a call.

ei3 has been busy over the years. Its technology can be found in more than 5,000 factories connecting to more than 20,000 machines. Typical installation is through the machine OEM giving them a secure channel into the machines they’ve sold. Cramer tells me they call it “secured remote services.”

Without diving into specifics, the gist of the service is allowing only a single point of entry through the corporate firewall. Consolidating all OT connections through a single point make IT happier. Meanwhile, the operations technology people—engineers, maintenance, operators—are able to control connections to equipment. It’s a way of creating happiness for both sides of the famous IT/OT divide.

Then I got the news that ei3 announces next phase of European expansion by completing acquisition of Copenhagen-based NextIOT. With two bases in Europe, ei3 is able to address strong demand for IIoT services in Europe with growing onshore, multilingual team

As part of the acquisition, NextIOT is being renamed “ei3 Denmark ApS” and will join ei3’s existing Switzerland-based data science team as ei3’s European operations.

By acquiring NextIOT ei3 is now able to expand its sales and marketing activities to serve the growing number of European clients from an onshore location and support them with a multilingual growing workforce. The ei3 solution of guiding OEMs of any size along their journey towards digitization and the practical adoption of IIoT with limited investment and instant ROI remains the same. Recent events have once again proven the value of remote access and remote service, though the full value of IIoT clearly goes beyond that.

“ei3 is the best choice for OEMs who want to provide secure remote service and support, which has now become more critical than ever. The safety of technicians and plant workers is increased by using remote service,” says Spencer Cramer, Founder and CEO of ei3. “In the coming months, we will be rolling out a new product called Essential that will allow a secure and free method for data collection to enable quick adoption of the IIoT technology. We are happy to complete this acquisition as it brings us closer to our European customer base. Especially in this trying time where the need for properly architected, secure, remote service is so critical.”

ei3 provides an end-to-end IoT solution starting from edge device to secure private cloud to robust web-based apps to powerful and practical predictive maintenance tools. Earlier this year, ei3 announced that the solution has now been decoupled from the hardware and can be deployed separately. This gives ei3 customers the freedom and flexibility to choose where and how their data is managed.

“We look forward to working closely with our new colleagues in Copenhagen to deliver on the benefits of Industry 4.0 and Artificial Intelligence,” says Dr. Stefan Hild, Managing Director ei3 Europe.

Ecosystem strategy essential for CSP success in B2B 5G

Platforms and value-add are crucial for not only success, but also survival, in many software categories today. I’ve done a bit of advisory and promotional work in this area. A platform with open APIs supporting a thriving ecosystem (think a healthy pond and wetland ecosystem with a variety of plant and animal life) brings value to both the suppliers and the users.

In the case of this research, we’re talking Communications Services Providers (CSPs) and what they need to consider for a strategy to make it in a 5G world. From the report summary:

Telcos losing ground in early enterprise 5G projects, must act quickly to recover position of influence as world emerges from COVID-19 pandemic

In brief—the news focuses on results of a global research study that includes some compelling data surrounding 5G in the atmosphere of Covid. 

  • Omdia believes that the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing the ‘fast-forward’ button on enterprise demand for 5G technology solutions. Indeed, 5G investment in China is already recovering because the country recognizes the importance of accelerating the digitalisation of industries to guard against future risk.
  • Omdia expects this trend to unfold globally as COVID-19 makes digitizing the physical, enabling a work-anywhere economy and mitigating risk in supply chains through an ecosystem play more relevant than ever.
  • It also reveals that manufacturing, transport, utilities and energy/mining sectors account for nearly 80% of early enterprise 5G deals. As an enabler of business solutions, 5G’s value will be realized through industry specific processes, supply chains, partnerships, and applications.
  • The report also notes that the new 5G world demands CSPs to embrace platform-based business models and orchestrate partner ecosystems to meet specific enterprise demands. The report points to examples of how Deutsche Telekom, Verizon, and Telefónica are starting to form industry partnerships to access these verticals.

BearingPoint//Beyond, in collaboration with Omdia (previously Ovum), released a report May 5, 2020 outlining how Communications Service Providers (CSPs) must change strategies in order to drive revenues from their 5G investments. The study demonstrates alignment between CSPs and enterprises on the importance of 5G but reveals a worrying trend for CSP 5G revenues based on their roles in early 5G enterprise projects.

The report finds that 5G strategies focused on selling communications solutions only are failing and that only CSPs engaging partner ecosystems to solve enterprises’ business problems will be able to make up lost ground. Additionally, it identifies key vertical markets, uncovers initial success stories and opportunities and key learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Omdia reports that 72.8% of CSPs believe most of their 5G revenues will come from B2B, B2B2X or Government/smart cities opportunities. Earlier this year, BearingPoint//Beyond research showed that CSPs expect a 15% increase in current revenues from B2B 5G services. However, Omdia’s Enterprise 5G Innovation Tracker reveals that they’re already being cut out of strategic engagement and solution building with enterprise partners. In 40% of enterprise 5G deals signed CSPs were the secondary supplier. 32% were led by enterprises. Only 21% were led by CSPs.

“Only one in five early enterprise 5G deals are CSP-led, proving that the way CSPs want to sell is at odds with the way in which businesses want to buy. What’s deeply concerning is that some of these early deals, such as the ones we see in automotive, cut out CSPs entirely – even connectivity is being provided by other suppliers. Businesses want to buy complete solutions that fit their needs and help them solve business problems, rather than individual technology assets. This is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity that CSPs need to address fast and requires CSPs to collaborate with enterprises and SMBs to better understand their reality,” says Angus Ward, CEO, BearingPoint//Beyond.

The report emphasizes the need for CSPs to change their posture from ‘5G-first’ to ‘business-first’ thinking, focusing on applications and vertical-specific solutions. It finds that enterprises are already making the connection between 5G and applications. Omdia asserts that 5G will act as a catalyst for those enterprises that are still hesitant about the deployment of specific applications and will enhance certain applications that are going to be deployed anyway.

“CSPs will only realize value from 5G if they can identify, partner, codevelop, implement, and run a proposition with application-specific and industry-specific specialists,” says Evan Kirchheimer, Research Vice President, Service Provider & Communications, Omdia. “CSPs that can orchestrate such a complex web of relationships will be capable of capturing a greater share of the market and will not be relegated to being one of many connectivity providers competing solely on price.”

Omdia’s Enterprise 5G Innovation Tracker reveals that manufacturing, transport, utilities and energy/mining sectors account for nearly 80% of early enterprise 5G deals. As an enabler of business solutions, 5G’s value will be realized through industry specific processes, supply chains, partnerships, and applications. The report points to examples of how Deutsche Telekom, Verizon and Telefónica are starting to form industry partnerships to access these verticals.

“The promise of enterprise 5G is there for the taking, but CSPs must realize they will need to master ecosystem orchestration, including joint go-to-market with vendors and cocreation with customers,” says Dario Talmesio, Principal Analyst & Practice Leader, CSPs Europe, Omdia.

Omdia believes that the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing the ‘fast-forward’ button on enterprise demand for 5G technology solutions. Indeed, 5G investment in China is already recovering because the country recognizes the importance of accelerating the digitalisation of industries to guard against future risk. Omdia expects this trend to unfold globally as COVID-19 makes digitizing the physical, enabling a work-anywhere economy and mitigating risk in supply chains through an ecosystem play more relevant than ever.

“The report notes that the brave new 5G world demands that CSPs be brave. CSPs have to embrace platform-based business models and orchestrate partner ecosystems to meet specific enterprise demands. This requires a change in mindset, experimenting with business models, accelerating testing and monetising speed to test and monetize new offerings that are co-created with ecosystem of partners and underpinned by the right IT platform to support these new ways of working,” concludes Ward. “Fundamentally, CSPs must become 5G ecosystem orchestrators. That’s the only way they can hope to meet enterprise business needs and re-integrate themselves into enterprise 5G value-chain as the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Download a free copy of ‘Industries and enterprises are ready to reap the benefits of 5G’.

BearingPoint//Beyond Infonova Digital Business Platform

While researching Bearing point, I found this information about its platform. So, here is a bit further information.

BearingPoint//Beyond’s  Infonova Digital Business Platform is 5G-ready, enabling Communication Service Providers (CSPs) around the world to create, experiment, launch, and monetize new 5G offerings at speed and at scale. The Infonova platform has already been selected by major CSPs, including NTT Group and Tata Communications.

To monetize 5G at scale, CSPs must ensure that their operational and business support systems can meet four main requirements:

  • Orchestration and delivery of complex solutions spanning both different types of networks (e.g: 4G, Fiber,5G) and different sources of services (e.g. edge, AR, VR)
  • Flexibility in charging and monetization capabilities enabling CSPs to bundle and price anything from network slicing and consumer IoT, to industrial IoT solutions
  • The development of partner ecosystems enabling CSPs to truly co-invent and co-create joint solutions with multiple third parties that better fit customer needs
  • Increased operational agility and speed with cloud native solutions

The 5G-ready Infonova Digital Business Platform has been designed to deliver precisely these capabilities, enabling CSPs to:

  • Reduce risk by rapidly experimenting, launching and monetizing new offerings and scale with success, due to its SaaS delivery model
  • Achieve fast and simple integration with their business and operational landscape by using a comprehensive library of Open APIs and a flexible microservices and containerized architecture delivered in cloud native environments
  • Offer advanced charging and billing capabilities ready to support any pricing model, including network slicing offerings
  • Bundle anything with connectivity – especially important for consumer IoT, OTT services and enterprise solutions (e.g. Industrial IoT, Autonomous driving) – as a result of its flexible catalogue
  • Access comprehensive order management and service fulfillment functionalities, managing the challenge and complexity of dynamic 5G service activation, diversity of devices and network functions
  • Support multiple business partners on a single platform, allowing CSPs to easily and dynamically exchange offerings, orchestrate and monetize B2B2X, B2B, IoT marketplace, B2C and wholesale 5G use cases with an ecosystem of partners

Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center Launched

Turns out that I’ve been following developments of US leaders of Smart Manufacturing (yes, a thing, so capitalized) for going on to 10 years. I’ll put a number of links to previous posts that begin in 2011.

The beginnings were a group led by Jim Davis of UCLA, Jim Wetzel from General Mills, John Bernardin from Rockwell Automation, and a few others called the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC). They were developing ideas to fund and promote Smart Manufacturing when eventually the US Federal government began funding test beds and institutes through the Department of Energy.

By then Germany had combined with the Fraunhofer Institute and leading technology suppliers such as Siemens and Festo to use the concept of cyberphysical systems as the basis for Industrie 4.0—an initiative supporting the German machine building industry. The idea had spread to China, and several European countries. The US suddenly was playing catch-up.

At that point the SMLC dissolved and members reconstituted under the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) now called CESMII—The Smart Manufacturing Institute. I wrote an update to this last January after a lunch I had with old friend John Dyck at the end of December 2019. John had left his roles at Rockwell Automation and MESA International to lead this new initiative.

CESMII has been busy developing its own academic partnership with the North Carolina State University. The partners have launched the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center (SMIC) at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. The objective of the SMIC is to link manufacturers, industrial technology vendors, systems integrators and equipment providers with academia, demonstrating and driving research and innovation that scales to all of US manufacturing. 

At NC State, pilot plants for biomanufacturing, papermaking, nonwovens textiles, and advanced manufacturing are using Smart Manufacturing tools from CESMII and its nationwide partners.

The SMIC at NC State is a visible proof point of CESMII’s well documented network-of-networks strategy to make Smart Manufacturing readily available and accessible throughout the nation. The SMIC facilities now become available for industry to try innovative Smart Manufacturing solutions and drive their use of Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning, Energy Productivity, Asset Performance Management and so forth.

In its first 45 days this winter, the NC State SMIC successfully demonstrated the integration of a dozen vendor solutions (including: Siemens, Honeywell, Allen Bradley (Rockwell Automation), National Instruments, ABB, DeltaV (Emerson Process Technologies), Andritz and Sartorius) using the CESMII SM Innovation Platform. Avid Solutions of Raleigh, NC, is the strategic Systems Integration partner for this initiative. 

A video demonstrating the interoperability of 3rd-party Smart Manufacturing solutions leveraging core CESMII technologies is linked below. This is an excellent presentation, especially the first part where the basics of the platform and ecosystem are discussed. I highly recommend checking it out.

The SMIC Director, Professor Yuan-Shin Lee of NC State, comments, “NC State is a ‘Think and Do’ nationally recognized university for research and innovation. With this CESMII partnership, the NC State SMIC will be able to build and sustain a skilled and innovative Smart Manufacturing workforce with expertise in the requisite technology and best practices, and the ability to develop, continuously update, and deploy customizable, interdisciplinary educational training resources and programs. With this partnership, the NC State SMIC will develop a world-class Smart Manufacturing demonstration facility through partnerships with industry and regional and national laboratories for sustainable workforce development and educational training. We are very excited about this new opportunity. “ 

CESMII COO, Howard Goldberg, added, “We’re just as excited as the NC State team to make this announcement. NC State is a valued Education & Workforce Development partner for CESMII and will offer CESMII-sanctioned Smart Manufacturing training and education offerings through the SMIC. Additionally, the CESMII technology infrastructure connected to the NC State manufacturing assets will demonstrate the openness and interoperability essential to scaling innovation through Smart Manufacturing solutions beyond a limited pilot phase. We look forward to ending the days of ‘Pilot Purgatory’ which have held industry back for decades by creating and testing solutions at a SMIC and moving them to production environments through the large-scale use of our platform technologies.” 

Video

Advanced Manufacturing Gets Government Support

Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition Wins Funding

Rockwell Automation Initiates Department of Energy Test Bed Project

Leadership at Smart Manufacturing Coalition

Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition Announces New Secretary

Smart Manufacturing

US Government Smart Manufacturing Institute

Virtual Storage Platform Lowers Costs and Simplifies Data Infrastructure Management For Midsize Enterprises

Some analysts believe manufacturing generates more data than any other sector. Maybe, maybe not. But we do have the ability to rapidly generate a lot of data. Storage gets to be an interesting part of a manufacturing IT equation. This midsize storage solution from Hitachi Vantara could be just what you need at the plant level.

In brief:

  • 4:1 Data De-Duplication Delivers a Guaranteed 75% Improvement in Storage Capacity
  • New Ops Center Software Features AI-Driven Management Tools to Simplify Storage Provisioning For AI, ML and Containerized Apps
  • New EverFlex from Hitachi Vantara Provides More Choice to Help Customers Move to Pay-Per-Use Consumption Models

Hitachi Vantara, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., introduced Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E990, the company’s new storage platform for midsize enterprise customers.

Feature summary. The E990 combines high performance and low latency with industry-leading data de-duplication guarantees storage cost reductions. Hitachi Ops Center’s artificial intelligence (AI)-driven management software can simplify storage provisioning for AI, machine learning (ML) and containerized applications. The E990 with Hitachi Ops Center provides an NVMe all-flash option for Hitachi Vantara’s family of solutions for midsize enterprises including Hitachi’s signature 100% data availability guarantee for businesses of all sizes.

The company also unveiled EverFlex, a program that provides simple, elastic and comprehensive acquisition choices for the E990 and the entire Hitachi Vantara portfolio. EverFlex adds consumption-based pricing models that range from basic utility pricing, to custom outcome-based services, to Storage-as-a-Service.

Availability

Hitachi VSP E990, Hitachi Ops Center and EverFlex are available globally from Hitachi Vantara and its network of partners.

204 Wireless Power for IoT Devices via Light Podcast Interview

In a turnaround, this time I’m doing an interview. First one in years. This episode is an interview with Yuval Boger, CMO of Wi-Charge, who talks about wireless remote power for charging IoT devices with light. There was a gap between this and my last podcast. In the interim, we sold a house, bought a house, and moved to another state–all at the beginning of the covid-19 rise and the shelter-in-place orders. It has been crazy times. Now, we’ve plenty of time to get used to the new house. I hope everyone listening is doing well.

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