Schneider Electric, a leader in Digital Transformation of energy management and automation, has announced the expansion of its partnerships with leading technology companies to address the convergence of IT and OT. Bringing together system integrators with IT solution providers to build integrated industrial Edge Computing solutions, the expanded partnerships have resulted in the immediate release of three programmes including: new reference designs (co-developed with AVEVA and integrating solutions from Lenovo and Stratus), a learning path for system integrators and a collaborative online community for learning and sharing opportunities within Schneider Electric Exchange. The industrial edge programmes from Schneider Electric empower system integrators to expand their value to the end user, enabling their customers’ industrial Digital Transformations.
“The smart factory is becoming smarter. Our expanded partnerships and new industrial edge programmes empower system integrators to leverage their domain expertise and become IT/OT convergence specialists and meet these needs for their customers,” said Philippe Rambach, Senior Vice President, Industrial Automation, Schneider Electric. “We know that smart manufacturing is driving an unprecedented wave of IT technologies into industrial spaces. As companies leverage AI, robotic processing automation and more, they will require Edge Computing solutions to reduce latency and enable resiliency, while ensuring privacy and security, and addressing important data and bandwidth requirements.”
What is the industrial edge?
For industrial operators to capture the benefits of increased automation, they cannot rely on cloud-technology alone to bring the resiliency and speed demanded by AI, HD cameras and other Industry 4.0 technologies. Local Edge data centres are IT infrastructure enclosures/spaces/facilities distributed geographically to enable endpoints on the network. When in industrial environments, such as a manufacturing plant or distribution centre, this application is referred to as ‘industrial edge’. Analysts have identified the Edge as becoming increasingly important.
“The industrial edge is one of the fastest-growing segments of industrial automation and a key driver that is influencing Digital Transformation,” according to Craig Resnick, Vice President, ARC Advisory Group. “To achieve the shortest possible ROI, manufacturers must properly measure asset performance, rapidly identify any problem areas and make any crucial changes in real time that will drastically improve their operations. The industrial edge is where this important on-site data capture occurs, real time analysis of this data is performed and converted into intelligent information and then shared with the cloud and throughout the entire enterprise while addressing manufacturers’ concerns, such as latency and security for production environments.”
Schneider Electric has more than 1,000 industry-leading Alliance System Integrator Partners in 67 countries and more than 400 IT solution providers in its award-winning partner programme worldwide which are already certified to build, deploy and service Edge Computing solutions.
“Schneider Electric’s extensive partner ecosystem is unparalleled in both IT and OT systems, making it an unrivalled advantage over the competition,” said Pankaj Sharma, Executive Vice President, Secure Power, Schneider Electric. “When you combine the power of the partner ecosystem with our expertise at the Edge and the breadth of our offer, it’s a winning trifecta for system integrators and IT solution providers.”