Delivering Interoperability at the Industrial IoT Edge

Edge Xpert delivers on IOTech’s vision of creating a highly-scalable and industrial-grade open Edge Computing solution that is platform-independent, flexible and secure. Supported by a rich ecosystem of components, Edge Xpert can bring business value by delivering interoperability between devices, applications and services, across a wide range of Industrial IoT Edge use cases.

Edge XpertThe Open Software Platform for the IoT Edge

What is Edge Xpert?

Edge Xpert is a powerful Open IoT Edge Computing platform that enables the integration of multiple different OT devices and IT/Cloud endpoints. The platform provides users with the capability to perform data analytics, decision making and control at the Edge. Edge Xpert is targeted for deployment on to Edge Gateways and Industrial Servers, and addresses key business interoperability challenges where OT and IT worlds converge - and where data flows both north and south, and east to west in distributed IoT Edge architecture.

Leveraging the EdgeX Foundry

Edge Xpert productizes and enhances the latest stable release of the Linux Foundation’s open-source EdgeX Foundry platform to provide a commercially-supported solution for Industrial IoT Edge applications. This approach minimizes any risk of open source adoption and is key to users deploying in mission- and business-critical systems. In addition, Edge Xpert includes a range of value add features to provide a complete IoT Edge solution that greatly reduces time-to-market for new projects.

Heterogenous Device and Cloud Integration

Support for multi-protocol OT device/protocol and IT/Cloud endpoints via normalized southbound and northbound APIs

Open Architecture

• Fully open, vendor-neutral platform not tied to hardware, operating system, device or cloud provider

• API-based microservices architecture enables application functionality to be easily enhanced or replaced as needed

• Polyglot platform - add value and functionality with your favorite programming language (e.g. Java, JavaScript, Python, Go-Lang, C/C++)

Distributable Architecture

• Microservices can run on a single host or be distributed across a cluster based on resource availability

• Containerized deployment of microservices to support portability

• Scalability and failover support through distribution of microservices

• Facilitates hierarchical operations throughout deployments from edge to cloud

Enabling Edge Intelligence

• Supports edge analytics and device actuation needed in low-latency mission critical and safety-oriented applications

• Filter and transform data at the edge to reduce cloud communication and storage costs

• Integrates with leading commercial and third-party edge analytics solutions

Platform Independence

Platform independent solution not tied to any specific operating system or hardware. Support for containerization helps minimize deployment dependencies and simplify solution roll-out

Edge Xpert is targeted at Edge Gateways and Industrial Servers and can be used to address key interoperability challenges where “south meets north, east and west” in a distributed IoT Edge architecture

Full Edge Platform Solution

Edge Xpert is comprised of a comprehensive suite of microservices that form a complete IoT Edge Platform. The microservices communicate via standard APIs allowing the services to be easily replaced with new or third party implementations if needed. The delivered microservices include:

• Device Services - the set of interfaces that enable connectivity to the IoT Edge devices, sensors and actuators. Edge Xpert supports the ingestion of data from a growing number of industrial protocols and provides SDKs (in both C and Go-Lang) that enable the creation of additional Device Services if required

• Core Services - the core functionality that supports the connection between the northbound and southbound interfaces. Core Services include a centralized persistence facility that enables data to be stored until it can be forwarded northbound

• Supporting Services - perform operations on edge data with business value-adding services. For example, the analytics, dashboarding and scheduling microservices can establish key workflows that can optimize business operations

• Export and Application Services - the set of interfaces that connect the platform to enterprise Cloud and IT systems. This includes integration with ‘big data’ platforms like AWS, Google IoT Core and Microsoft Azure. SDK is provided for the creation of additional northbound services

• Security - services that allow the platform to be used within a secure architecture. Includes a security store to provide a safe storage of private information and a reverse proxy to restrict remote access to the platform’s microservice APIs

• System Management – services that support remote administration and facilitate the deployment, configuration and lifecycle management of the platform

The functionality provided by the Edge Xpert platform enables users to accelerate their Edge IoT system development and bring their solutions to market more quickly

Edge Xpert Key Features

• Complete IoT Edge Computing platform

• Modern microservices architecture

• Advanced OT Device Connectivity • Out-of-the-box support for integration with

multi-protocol OT device endpoints including: Modbus, BACnet, OPC UA, MQTT, Zigbee, BLE, CANopen, EtherCAT and PROFINET

• Enterprise IT and Cloud Connectivity • Out-of-the-box support for integration with

multiple application endpoints including: Microsoft Azure IoT Hub, Google Cloud IoT and AWS IoT Platform

• Supporting Services • InfluxDB time-series database for additonal

edge storage use cases • Grafana dashboarding for data visualization • Node-RED which provides a dynamic

mechanism for users to add their own application-specific edge analytics

• Edge Xpert Management UI supports fast project development and deployment

• Commercial quality user documentation, product tutorials and examples

• Available as easy-to-deploy Docker containers for Linux x86 (64 bit) and ARM (32/64 bit) platforms. Contact IOTech for details of other supported platforms

A Supported Solution

Edge Xpert allows users to realize the benefits of the open-source EdgeX technology but with the confidence that the software can be deployed in the most demanding business-critical systems. We do this by delivering both the technical and commercial assurances that can only be provided by a professional software vendor.

The Edge Xpert product offering also includes professional services to optimize EdgeX adoption across the complete life cycle of a solution, including training, on-boarding customer assets, operational technology integration, pilot projects and accelerated roadmap.

For additional information on Edge Xpert, contact us at info@iotechsys.com

Visit our website www.iotechsys.com

Edge Xpert Device Services are now enhanced with Edge XRT technology to provide greater flexibility and enhanced performance.

IOTech’s lightweight real-time Edge IoT Platform, Edge XRT is embedded into each Edge Xpert Device Service to create smart device subsystems capable of their own sophisticated local processing.

When embedded with Edge XRT, each Device Service can optionally apply its own local filtering, perform low-latency decision making and support pluggable analytics all within the context of the Device Service – that is before the data is even passed to the other Edge Xpert services.

By processing the data much closer to the real edge devices, Edge Xpert now enables much lower latency processing than previously possible.

Smart Devices Services

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