IIC Journal of Innovation 5th Edition | Page 3

Dear Reader: We are at a very exciting time in the evolution of industry itself as the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ is now well underway! The Industrial Internet, enabled by pervasive connectivity and cloud computing, is fundamentally changing the way business is done. The rise of powerful edge compute devices further accelerates the convergence of the IT and OT domains and drives new IIoT functionality. With this powerful distributed computing capability applications, analytics and logic can be containerized, centrally managed, deployed and run directly on the industrial networking infrastructure. The functionality and use of edge compute is growing at a blistering pace. Previous metrics used to define the evolution of computing functionality like Moore’s Law and memory size can no longer adequately convey computing system performance characteristics. 90% of today’s data has been generated in just the last two years. A realistic estimate in future data growth is an astounding increase of at least ten-fold every two years or sooner. This explosion of data – ushering in the advent of unlimited bandwidth with zero latency – presents an urgent need for IIoT systems to transition compute to the edge devices. Accordingly, new edge compute devices are critical parts of any IIoT system and will require definition by a new set of metrics including form factor, reliability, distributed data capabilities, connectivity, interoperability and security. The work of the IIC, especially the Edge Computing Task Group, is focused on these new capabilities. We are investigating ways to manage and standardize the connection architectures, orchestration, distribution and security of compute deployment. The articles in this issue address these requirements and use cases for edge computing from several perspectives including device interoperability, edge analytics, connectivity frameworks, smart buildings, the edge-cloud continuum, machine learning and even the location of the industrial edge. These offer a good snap- shot of the members’ view and interests on this topic within IIC. Welcome to this edition of the Journal of Innovation – Edge Computing. As Co-chairs, we certainly don’t think the work will stop here; rather, we are looking forward to meeting you at future IIC events and driving this topic with you in Edge Computing Task Group meetings. The Edge Computing Task Group co-chairs: Lalit Canaran – Vice President, SAP SE Todd Edmunds – Senior Solution Architect, Cisco Systems Dr. Mitch Tseng – Distinguished Consultant, Huawei Technologies IIC Journal of Innovation ii