The Edge Computing Consortium (ECC) was officially established in November 2016 with the announcement from consortium’s meeting in Beijing, China. This initiative was jointly created by Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenyang Institute of Automation of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), Intel Corporation, ARM, and iSoftStone. This is an extremely insightful development in a region that is dominated by a manufacturing industry that in some ways lags more mature economies in the adoption of advanced automation.
The formal ECC mission statement is:
“To build a cooperative platform for the edge computing industry that will give impetus to openness and collaboration in the Operational Technology (OT) and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industries, nurtures industrial best practices, and stimulates the healthy and sustainable development of edge computing. Today’s global digital revolution is driving a new round of industrial restructuring. Through the digital transformation of industries, products are incorporated into intelligent interconnection. In-depth coordination and convergence of OT and ICT help improve industrial automation, meet the customized requirements of products and services, promote full-lifecycle transformation from products to service operations, and trigger the innovation of products, services, and business models. This will have a lasting impact on the value chain, supply chain, and ecosystem.”
There is no doubt that the mission is well aligned with the challenges facing the global industrial automation market. The message is fundamentally about IT/OT convergence that has been topic of discussion for over 15 years in more advance manufacturing industries. But, it also places significant emphasis on the development of edge devices to connect production systems to the Cloud. There are two elements related to the creation of the consortium that are very interesting: 1) China’s Attempt to Elevate Manufacturing and 2) Huawei Seeks Control of the Edge.
China’s Attempt to Elevate Manufacturing
China has steadily been losing its attraction as a low cost nation for outsourced manufacturing. As many companies continue to employ advanced automation in order to bring manufacturing closer to their end markets this sends a message that China is interested in raising their capabilities by joining in the Industrial IoT discussion. In North America, manufacturers in automotive, tire building, and medical industries for example have been reshoring their manufacturing in order to shorten their supply chain and bring manufacturing closer to end markets. This appears to be an effort by China to stop the outflow of manufacturing to other nations.
Huawei Seeks Control of the Edge
This is also a very shrewd move by Huawei Technologies to be one of the founding members. It is no secret that Huawei Technologies is a dominant player in the networking infrastructure market in China where Cisco has been seeking to make inroads since for quite some time. Cisco has confronted significant hurdles seeking to gain a foothold in commercial office automation in this region. The industrial automation market is a viable wedge point for Cisco to make an entry into large Chinese automation market. Cisco’s partnership with Rockwell Automation and FANUC has given Cisco brand recognition in the automation market. However, the membership profile of the ECC is likely to create further hurdles. Huawei Technologies will undoubtedly have influence on the direction of standards and technology directions established for this market. The inclusion of Intel and Softbank’s ARM is critical to ensure technological standards are implemented in silicon.
Edge computing is becoming the battleground for many automation manufacturers to gain access to the installed base of 100’s of millions of production machines. Moreover, as IIoT topologies evaluate the move of Cloud analytics closer to the edge the connection of production machines will be one of the larger IIoT profit pools. Increasingly more technology suppliers are seeking to place a stake in the ground at the edge and this will remain a flash point into the foreseeable future. The ECC will have a significant influence on which technology suppliers will succeed in this very large manufacturing market that is for the most part disconnected.
