Where is the Edge of the Edge of Industrial IoT ?
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Functional viewpoint Implementation viewpoint
The functional and implementation viewpoints mostly deal with the technical aspects of the Edge , but the business and usage viewpoints provide strong clues on “ where ” the Edge is .
There may be a continuum of fundamental capabilities for an IoT solution and the Edge can move along this continuum based on the key objectives . Where the Edge is will be influenced by the key business drivers that can be classified at a high level around three , to include privacy , latency and connectivity . 6
In terms of the Business Viewpoint of the IIRA this means that exceeding the boundary of the Edge is where an Industrial IoT solution cannot achieve its Key Objectives through Fundamental Capabilities . The IIRA defines key objectives as “ quantifiable highlevel technical and ultimately business outcomes expected of the resultant system ..." and fundamental capabilities refer to “ high-level specifications of the essential ability of the system to complete specific major business tasks .” 5
Figure 1 : Edge continuum for typical industrial deployment scenarios
All three of these drivers are equally important to consider , but latency is often the least understood as a driver for key objectives . Rate of information decay , analytical complexity and decision latency all contribute to overall latency requirements .
This is best described in an example found in typical industrial operations , as shown in Figure 1 . This is not a complete set of deployment scenarios and is not intended as an architecture diagram but it serves as an illustration of how the Edge can move on a continuum based on the business problem that is addressed with IIoT .
5 Section 4.4 and 4.5 http :// www . iiconsortium . org / IIC _ PUB _ G1 _ V1.80 _ 2017-01-31 . pdf
6 https :// www . ibm . com / blogs / internet-of-things / edge-iot-analytics /
- 6 - September 2017