To the cloud and back... Is Cloud-Native systems your best option?

If you have already kicked-off a discussion to convert your traditional factory to a Smart Factory, then you have probably went through many options and discussions regarding the type of system you will use, including some amazing "Cloud-Native" solutions. and the common question is; Which one is better? and is cloud really cheaper and more efficient?

The right answer is "It depends", and before we understand what it depends on, let's align on few fundamentals so we can have a common ground;

• Edge is (a place not an act); They are physical environments made up of hardware at the edge of the network. (It is the place where data is collected to be processed.)
• Edge computing is (an act); the act of running workloads on edge devices.?
• Cloud is (a place not an act); They are software-defined environments created by huge centralized datacenters or server farms.?(It is the place where data can be stored or applications can run)
• Cloud computing is (an act); the act of running workloads in a cloud.?
• Time sensitivity Is the rate at which a decision needs to be made to avoid big business loss, in different words, what is the maximum lag that the business is willing to accept.

Now, let us run the scenarios;

In case the sheer volume of data collected (un-processed) is too much to be sent continuously to the cloud, like when you're a huge plant with thousands of parameters to be tracked, analyzed and processed, then while considering the options you need to see if the cloud storage and processing fees will be your most efficient option or it will be cheaper on the long term to invest in datacenters and bigger IT department and host your solution on-premise, not to mention the latency that you might experience while sending and receiving that huge data from the factory, through the network, to the cloud, and all the way back! While this is not the "trendy" setup technology companies discuss now, but in some cases it is still the optimum setup in terms of functionalities and value. You can still consider a thin reporting layer on the cloud to have the needed flexibility for the management and executive level.

Smaller plants with limited number of parameters will have a different scenario, as the on-prem setup might be a big investment for them, so one of the options might be cloud computing, yet another question needs to be answered "what is the time sensitivity?" or in other words how crucial it is to take instantaneous actions based on data? if we are talking about seconds, which might be the case in repetitive automated industries where a single line can produce thousands of items every minute, and a minor deviation in the process can result in huge waste, then the business leaders will have no tolerance for the lag that would normally take place as the data is collected, transferred to a central cloud without modification, and then processed before a decision is sent back to the plant for execution, then complementing the cloud setup by having some data processing happening at the "Edge of the network" would be a great option with the best value.

Does this mean that EDGE is part of the cloud?

The answer is "Not really", EDGE can complement the cloud to reduce latency, and by the way it can run as a standalone system without the cloud; In case the size of your operation is relatively small and all you need is efficiency and other shopfloor measures, you can count on having a system running on the EDGE with negligible investment, and many companies offer great interface and ready OEE and recipe modules for their EDGE solutions.

To conclude, the word "Cloud" is currently the buzz word in the Industry 4.0 and manufacturing C-Level communities, and I do agree it is the future, yet on the execution level many parameters should be considered, and there is no "one-size-fits-all" setup.

Thank you for taking those few minutes to go through the article, and as always, I am welcoming thoughts, questions, agreeing or disagreeing comments.