Siemens Launches Industrial Edge Management System

Siemens’ latest addition to its Industrial Edge Portfolio is a central and company-wide scalable infrastructure for managing connected edge devices and apps. With the  Industrial Edge Management system, users can remotely monitor the status of every connected device and remotely install edge apps and software functions on distributed edge devices. In combination with existing hardware and software products, the Industrial Edge V1.0 open platform provides users with a ready-to-use and seamless solution for data processing on the production level with integrated device- and app-lifecycle management.

With this system, IT administrators and manufacturing engineers can monitor, diagnose and manage distributed edge devices and their states. This allows for secure, company-wide rollouts of new software apps on all connected Industrial Edge devices. Central software management minimizes the effort involved in maintenance and updates for distributed software instances. Siemens says existing, already containerized software like Docker is compatible with Industrial Edge. In addition, users can develop their own edge apps to meet company-specific requirements.

Siemens uses the Edge Management system to provide functional and security-related updates, which IT administrators can schedule for roll-out to connected edge devices, thus meeting the security requirements of an industrial IoT solution. The company says this rollout method helps with automation and reliability in manufacturing, with freedom from retroactive effects between automation and edge systems promoting automation solutions’ high system availability. Version 1.0 of the Edge Management system functions within the company infrastructure, and is specifically tailored to users desiring high data security. Future updates will enable operation of the Management system through cloud infrastructures.

The company says Siemens Industrial Edge V1.0 simplifies the collection and analysis of machine data and brings IT standards such as high-level language-based data analysis and processing, container-based apps and central software and device management directly to manufacturing – integrated in automation systems.