The "edge" is expanding and accelerating as companies of virtually every size and industry continue to adopt and leverage many of the new, innovative devices and applications that help bring ease and efficiency to the operations of everything.
IoT has advanced well beyond its origins, as sensors and devices connected to secure and increasingly fast networks continue to change the way products are designed, made, distributed, and managed, including in the manufacturing world.
These technologies are transforming industries in the way that they operate, communicate, and utilize data, and for manufacturing, those changes have come at a rapid pace, and an industry that was once slow to evolve is now digitizing at lightning speed.
IoT and related edge computing technologies are still relatively new, but they are quickly making their way across the manufacturing industry and becoming more common in factories with every passing day. According to the new market research report "Industrial IoT Market by Device & Technology, Connectivity Type, Software, Vertical, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2026", the IoT global market size already sits at USD 76.7 billion as of 2021. And over the next five years, the market for this technology is predicted to continue to grow at a CAGR of 6.7 percent, putting estimates at a market size of USD 106.1 billion in 2026.
Today, ZEDEDA, a leader in orchestration for the distributed edge, announced it joined the PTC Partner Network as part of the ThingWorx Ready™ program.
The PTC ThingWorx Ready program helps enable technology companies to validate their products' interoperability with the ThingWorx® Industrial IoT (IIoT) platform. A ThingWorx Ready designation makes a product available on the PTC Marketplace. PTC partners and customers can access and promote IIoT tools, market-ready solutions, and innovative technologies designed to aid solution deployments.
"We're pleased to welcome ZEDEDA to the ThingWorx Ready program," said Jonathan Kateman, senior vice president, Strategic Alliances at PTC. "Our network of technology partners allows us to offer our customers and partners innovative resources that add value to their IIoT solutions and accelerate time to business value."
ZEDEDA's cloud-based Edge Orchestration solution simplifies the deployment, management, and security of IIoT solutions at scale, extending the value of PTC's ThingWorx IIoT platform. With this solution, companies can securely scale their IIoT and edge computing solutions using PTC and partner software, choice of edge hardware, and any preferred on-premise or cloud backend.
They can do so while consolidating new software innovations alongside existing legacy applications and without requiring specialized IT skills in the field. ZEDEDA's support for applications deployed in virtual machines in addition to Docker containers and Kubernetes clusters enables operators to consolidate workloads by running existing Windows-based apps alongside new applications in containers.
"We're excited to be partnering with PTC as the leading IIoT platform provider," said ZEDEDA founder and CEO Said Ouissal. "Our mutual relationship with Microsoft makes it an even more natural fit. Customers want to move processing power and analytics to the edge of the network where the data is collected and connected."
The solution leverages the open-source EVE-OS from the Linux Foundation's LF Edge organization to provide an open, flexible, and secure foundation while abstracting the complexity of the diverse hardware, connectivity, and software at the distributed edge and mitigating vendor lock-in. The solution is horizontal, but focus markets include manufacturing, energy, retail, and healthcare.
ZEDEDA's orchestration solution benefits automation providers, machine builders, and end-users in a variety of ways. A flexible infrastructure foundation provides a simple and consistent experience when deploying edge applications for any use case such as OEE, predictive maintenance, quality control, and logistics.
On top of this, the built-in Zero Trust security model protects assets on the shop floor and enables users to segment layered OT control networks from IT systems with distributed firewall capability. The overall solution operates autonomously for maximum uptime, regardless of backend connectivity.
Teams can schedule software updates remotely, outside of production windows. Combined with PTC's broad application portfolio and domain expertise, these features provide customers with a robust platform to develop and scale secure IIoT solutions and increasingly deliver them with a SaaS model.
"ZEDEDA's subscription-based model is well-aligned with PTC's priority to deliver new SaaS solutions to our customers," said Joe Biron, IoT GM, and CTO, PTC. "We look forward to the collaboration."
Overall, this partnership is a sign of the IIoT and edge computing market trending towards a clearer delineation between infrastructure and applications and a more open approach. And as these technologies continue to become more typical in industrial operations, solutions like ZEDEDA and PTC's will also only become more commonplace as well
"We're excited about our partnership with PTC and how together we can help customers accelerate their digital transformation efforts," said Jason Shepherd, VP of Ecosystem, ZEDEDA. "The combination of our open, flexible edge orchestration solution and PTC's industry-leading applications and domain knowledge provides a highly scalable foundation to build solutions that drive new outcomes."
For those looking to learn more about this joint collaboration, PTC and ZEDEDA are hosting a joint webinar along with Intel on November 17.
Edited by
Luke Bellos
