With the rise of the deployment of internet of things (IoT) devices in the industry, factories are more and more connected and data-centric.

To connect the IoT devices, the traditional approach is to use cloud-based solutions. Those solutions can’t meet several requirements in the industry 4.0, in terms of latency and bandwidth. In several use cases, such as: connected robots, real-time IoT video monitoring, anomaly detection…etc. there’s a real need of a reliable and fast connectivity.

Therefore, a new model known as edge computing has emerged, helping industrials actors to move from centralized cloud-based solutions to a decentralized cloud-edge based solutions.

What is Edge Computing?

Edge Computing represents a distributed architecture that brings data storage and computation closer to the devices that generate it. This reduces the risk of bandwidth saturation and improves network latency.

How Edge Computing Will help in the rapid adoption of Industry 4.0?

With edge computing, connected devices within factories perform the processing of their data locally, away from the centralized data processing locations used in traditional cloud computing. This leads to a reduction of the network latency, and limits the risk of bandwidth saturations, so the connectivity will be more reliable.

Edge reduces Latency: Real-time applications represent one of the major use cases in Industry 4.0. By bringing DATA processing closer to devices that generate it, it’s possible for to significantly reduce the time needed to analyze this data. This low latency will help industrials actors to take a full advantage of main Industry 4.0 technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Edge enhances connectivity reliability: Edge devices are deployed locally which provides stronger and more reliable connections than the ones made to distant data centers deployed in the cloud. This reliable connectivity helps industrial actors to maximize IoT devices performances and ensure that there are no gaps in data collection or analysis operations.

Edge improves security: The centralized architecture of Cloud Computing makes it vulnerable to cyber-attacks such as DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks which may lead to the unavailability of resources or services. Edge computing is based on a decentralized architecture which makes it less vulnerable to this kind of attacks. Hence, distributing sensitive data and assets between different Edge nodes makes it less of a tempting target for hackers.