The edge is the junction point between the industrial world and the IoT world in the cloud. The edge can be decomposed into three macro components, as shown in the following diagram:
The Edge Gateway is the core and is responsible for forwarding the data from the site to the IoT Data Hub, whether this is on the cloud or not. The Edge Tools are utilities for configuration, log management, and patching the edge operating system, either from a remote or a local user interface. The Edge Computing is a new, upcoming component that uses data to perform an action at site level or to provide insights to headquarters.
So far, the Edge has been limited to collecting and forwarding data using the Edge Gateway to the I-IoT middleware, whether this is on the cloud or not. Recently, however, industrial companies have been able to...