Industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions – connectivity extended to machines, sensors, devices, and processes in an industrial setting, resulting in increased manufacturing efficiencies, better resource utilization, and transformed support models through automation and analytics – are being hindered by widespread fragmentation of IoT solution frameworks. EdgeX solves this by making it easy and quick to create IoT edge solutions that have the flexibility to adapt to changing business needs.

The EdgeX Foundry Project, announced today by the Linux Foundation, provides a flexible, modular open source software platform designed for industrial IoT. NetFoundry has joined as an active community evangelist, open source contributor, and member of the value-add marketplace.

Adopting a common Edge framework benefits the entire IoT ecosystem:

  • Enterprises can deploy IoT edge solutions quickly and easily with the flexibility to dynamically adapt to changing business needs
  • Value-add providers enjoy an open, standardized, modular environment and marketplace;
  • Independent Software Vendors can benefit from interoperability with 3rd party applications and hardware without reinventing connectivity
  • System Integrators can get to market faster with plug-and-play ingredients combined with their own proprietary inventions.

NetFoundry, EdgeX Foundry, & Industrial IoT (IIoT)

NetFoundry supports the EdgeX Foundry community, delivering:

  • Private connectivity atop the public Internet, carrier agnostic, across any mix of access networks
  • Industrial-grade cybersecurity, manageability and reliability, extensible for unique market needs (eg. Regulatory)
  • Agile, cloud-native deployment, using common developer / DevOps tools

EdgeX Foundry ISVs and Sis can leverage NetFoundry’s embedded software-defined networking to securely and reliably connect from edge to core to clouds, using their choice of Internet access provider at the edges, and combining multiple edge wired and wireless providers into hybrid WANs.  NetFoundry supports the EdgeX Foundry community, delivering:

  • On-demand, virtualized, private IIoT SDNs atop the public Internet
  • Industrial-grade network security, resiliency and reliability, extensible for unique business, compliance and regulatory needs
  • Agile, cloud-native orchestration, deployment and management, using off-the-shelf developer and devops tools

NetFoundry emerged from stealth in February 2017, with a diverse set of partners including Velocloud (SD-WAN) and Integron (managed industrial IoT services for verticals such as healthcare and pharmaceutical) announcing how they use NetFoundry software for embedded, secure, reliable networking (Integron press release link, Velocloud press release link).

“Businesses currently have to invest a lot of time and energy into developing their own edge computing solutions, before they can even deploy IoT solutions to address business challenges,” said Philip DesAutels, PhD Senior Director of IoT at The Linux Foundation and Executive Director of EdgeX Foundry. “EdgeX will foster an ecosystem of interoperable components from a variety of vendors, so that resources can be spent on driving business value instead of combining and integrating IoT components.”

“The EdgeX Foundry democratizes the IoT edge in a similar manner in which NetFoundry democratizes IoT networking”, said Galeal Zino, President of NetFoundry. “NetFoundry is excited to partner with the Linux Foundation to help unleash the collective innovation of IoT developers, and simplify their path to deploying valuable business applications.  The Linux Foundation has been wildly successful up and down the stack, from programming frameworks such as Node to networking architectures such as OpenDaylight, and we believe EdgeX Foundry will evolve to be a similar vibrant community and powerful architecture”.

About EdgeX Foundry

EdgeX Foundry is an open source project hosted by The Linux Foundation building a common open framework for IoT edge computing and an ecosystem of interoperable components that unifies the marketplace and accelerates the deployment of IoT solutions. Designed to run on any hardware or operating system with any application environment, the EdgeX framework enables developers to quickly create flexible IoT edge solutions that can easily adapt to changing business needs. To learn more, visit: www.edgexfoundry.org.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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