Why EdgeX?

Developers, technology providers, and end users can realize business value faster at a lower cost and risk through the skills, resource sharing, and economies of scale of the EdgeX Foundry ecosystem, either for their own implementations or by offering commercial “EdgeX-ready” offerings to others.

EdgeX Foundry is unique in its scope, broad industry support, credibility, investment and vendor-neutral Apache 2.0 open source licensing model under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation’s LF Edge organization. As such, EdgeX is a key enabler of digital transformation and AI across IIoT edge use cases and businesses in all vertical markets.

EdgeX Foundry focus is to exploit the benefits of edge Computing by leveraging cloud-native principles (e.g. loosely-coupled microservices, platform-independence) and by enabling an architecture that meets specific needs of the IoT edge including different connectivity protocols, security and system management for widely distributed compute nodes, and scaling down to highly-constrained devices.

The project’s sweet spot is in use cases where local decisions are at/or near real-time and when automation and actuation are supported by multiple sources of edge data. Here EdgeX addresses critical interoperability challenges for edge nodes and edge data normalization where “south meets north, east, and west” in a distributed IoT edge architecture.

Take advantage of edge computing opportunities with EdgeX Foundry

As edge computing goes mainstream, it provides a major strategic benefit for a wide range of industries. See how using EdgeX Foundry can help users/developers to transform their businesses by adopting an open IIoT platform:

Pluggable and Extensible Software Architecture -

Modern, distributed, microservices-based edge software architecture. Support for containerization (e.g. docker or snap) enables application portability and helps simplify application deployment and orchestration. EdgeX provides a standard open framework around which an ecosystem can emerge. It facilitates interoperable plug-and-play edge software applications and value add services.

End to End Connectivity and Interoperability -

The edge is inherently heterogenous and complex. Edge data connectivity with “things” relies on many different OT communication standards. EdgeX provides reference implementations for key IoT edge protocols (e.g. MQTT, Modbus, BACnet, etc. ) along with SDKs to allow users to add new ones. All complemented with connectors from a commercial ecosystem, making OT connectivity a configuration and not a programming task. There are also multiple cloud and IT endpoints that the edge systems must integrate with. EdgeX is cloud agnostic and provides flexible connectivity to and from different enterprise and IT environments.

Interoperability between New and Legacy -

EdgeX can translate communication protocols used by legacy devices into a language that modern smart devices and cloud applications can understand, making it easier to connect legacy technologies with modern IoT platforms. As a result, businesses can get started with IoT without investing in expensive new equipment with minimal investment in new capabilities — and immediately capture advanced insights across their operations.

Ensure Security and Compliance -

Companies can use EdgeX to easily firewall and filter critical edge data and devices, processing locally on-premise, and only expose selected data and applications to the Cloud.

Low Latency Performance and Scalability at the edge -

Edge applications need access to ‘real-time’ data e.g. millisecond/microsecond response times, often with absolute real-time predictability requirements. EdgeX addresses round-trip response times measured in milliseconds and was designed to run on a gateway, a server and/or class computing equipment using standard Windows or Linux operating systems. EdgeX also enables businesses to strategically choose which data they need to send to the Cloud, and which can be processed in a cost-effective fashion at the edge.

Operate Reliably even with Intermittent Connectivity -

EdgeX can enable industry 4.0 / manufacturing equipment and other smart devices to operate without disruption even when internet connectivity is down or intermittent. This makes it ideal for businesses that count on the ability to quickly analyse and action data – e.g. to detect and respond to equipment failures in remote locations without internet access, on ships at sea, or if cloud connectivity is lost for unforeseen reasons.

Wide Market Applicability -

EdgeX provides a horizontal set of standard services that can be used to support edge software use cases across industry verticals including: industry 4.0,  manufacturing, smart retail, banking, transportation, hospitality, healthcare, and more.