Optimised for demanding industrial edge environments, Edge Central 4.0 is designed to accelerate the deployment and adoption of the next generation of AI-driven industrial edge solutions.
Industry Impact: Use Cases in Building Automation and Beyond
IOTech customers and partners operate in a variety of industries, including building automation, renewable energy, manufacturing/industry 4.0, transportation and more.
“Edge Central has transformed how we manage and deploy building control systems across multiple sites at scale,” said Anno Scholten, Senior Director at CBRE, a building automation partner of IOTech. “These new capabilities provide us unprecedented visibility and control, allowing us to monitor our large fleet of buildings with greater efficiency, responsiveness, and accountability.”
Open Architecture and Advanced Features
Delivering maximum openness and flexibility, Edge Central 4.0 is fully aligned with EdgeX Foundry’s open source interoperability standards. IOTech Systems is a core contributor to the EdgeX ecosystem.
“With Edge Central 4.0, we’re delivering the features our industrial customers have been asking for—secure, scalable, and comprehensive edge data management with robust historical storage and real-time alarm management capabilities,” said Brad Corrion, CTO at IOTech Systems. “Our open architecture enables the deployment of any AI at the edge, while ensuring critical data normalization and standardization across industrial environments. This release reflects our deep commitment to open-source innovation and to solving real-world customer challenges at the industrial edge.”
New Services and Enhancements for Industrial Edge Solutions
Edge Central 4.0 provides a step change in edge capability, unlocking the next phase of industrial edge innovation, and meeting the advanced requirements of IOTech’s industrial operator customer base. Edge Central 4.0 includes new capabilities critical to industrial adoption, including:
- Edge Alarm Service: based on the OPC UA Alarm and Conditions standard and aligned with IEC 62682, the new service can normalize and manage all sources of Alarm data in an edge system independently from the underlying OT environment. This enables a unified approach to detecting of operational anomalies and ensuring minimal downtime.
- Edge Historian Service: provides massively scalable and efficient data storage and retrieval, allowing organizations to maintain comprehensive records of edge operations for analysis and compliance purposes throughout the lifetime of a deployment.
- New Python Application SDK and API: Expands developer access, unlocking a broader range of AI, analytics, and automation use cases at the edge.
- PostgreSQL as the Default Database: Delivers improved reliability, backup, and recovery – essential for mission-critical edge operations.
- Time-Based Scheduling: Providing precise, time-driven execution for enhanced control.
- Enhanced Access Control and Authorisation: Allowing secure user and group-based permissions across edge environments.
Security Features and Modular Edge Stack
Security enhancements in Edge Central 4.0 go beyond boundary protection, enabling secure data flow from OT endpoints through the edge stack and into cloud environments. New features extend access control, encryption, and monitoring across the full deployment footprint.
Edge Central 4.0 is part of IOTech Systems’ modular edge stack, which also includes Edge Connect for industrial connectivity and Edge Manager for large-scale orchestration and lifecycle management. Customers can deploy these components individually or as an integrated platform, depending on their infrastructure needs.
