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INDUSTRY, TECHNOLOGY, PRODUCTS and INNOVATION you want to read about

Driving process and manufacturing efficiency through digital services

OT finally meets the cloud!

t takes a little while for new technology see this happening for another 10 years or so. Security, reliability, manageability and fear of losing
Iand big conceptual shifts like the Fourth control are still big factors at play.
Industrial Revolution (4IR) to filter down into “The value of the underlying data, when combined with related commercial and other meta data, is
mainstream industrial practise. The 4IR is not immensely valuable. Cloud services that offer an easier way to derive that value are becoming easier to
new and technologically has been available use. So, systems that derive value from SCADA data are and will be in the cloud, de-risking the reliability
to a few real technically astute, capable and effort of maintenance, while the continued obsolescence hardware cycles are taken care of by
businesses for many years. What is different “Software as a Service” models. Products like Historians, Reporting Solutions, Alarm Management and
now is the “commercialisation” of this process even System Health Services will all become offered as a service. This will allow customers to select and
and the fact that giants like Amazon, Google pay for these as they go and grow.
and Microsoft, along with a host of “platform”
vendors, are now delivering solutions that can So, what are we doing in this space and why is this valuable to our customers?
be deployed by engineers where previously 1) We are busy moving our Alarm Management and Analysis offering into the cloud.
this could only be achieved by highly skilled 2) We are creating a System Health Services offering, where with a few clicks we will be able to offer
software developers. a dashboard and alerts to customers identifying problems in the SCADA before they happen, also
We at Adroit Technologies have been monitoring and alerting customers when they need to update software etc.
developing real-time SCADA software for well 3) Our new Adroit OPC and Edge Gateway software leverages all the years of driver development as
over 25 years. That means we understand the well as any Adroit SCADA installation and allows customers to reliably and securely select relevant
critical nature of communications. Reliability data from their SCADA/HMI systems (even if not Adroit) and to send this data into our cloud. From
and speed of SCADA to PLC comms defines us. here any secondary cloud they wish to use can harvest this data for further analysis and use.
An automation system that talks to 20 PLC’s 4) We have added a division to our technical support department called Digital and Data Services that
on a network, scanning thousands of IO in will allow us to take customers’ data and build reports and mobile views, investigate and deliver
sub-second resolution 24 hours a day 365 days artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions going forward. This is because over the next few
a year is the expected norm as process systems years, using cloud services offered by automation vendors is going to make this accessible and usable
rely on this to operate. Adroit MD, Dave by “non-data scientists”, so engineers will be able to build models and run solutions themselves.
Wibberley, said: “I want to state that we are still
a way off running larger critical SCADA systems The future has never been so exciting and we look forward to seeing this era play out, for ourselves and
in the cloud, and even with 5G networks I can’t our customers”, Wibberley said.

Making the Edge Smarter

dge AI computing applications are numerous and growing rapidly as businesses
Eintelligently transform operations and services with increasingly powerful analytics
and automation capabilities. IDC predicts that by 2023, 70% of Internet of Things (IoT)
deployments will include AI solutions for autonomous or edge decision-making, supporting
organisations’ operational and strategic agendas. i
Computer vision (CV) is one of the fasted growing edge AI applications, with security,
safety, manufacturing quality control and improving retail experiences among the leading
use cases. In a recent IDG survey, 96% of respondents believe CV has the potential to boost
revenue, while 97% said the technology will save their organisation time and money. ii
The Lenovo ThinkEdge SE70 is purpose built to unlock the power of CV applications for
enterprise. A version of the ThinkEdge SE70 will be offered with AWS Panorama Device SDK
pre-installed, allowing enterprise customers to transform every-day IP cameras into ‘smart’ comprehensive AI software stack with highly optimised,
cameras that run CV apps at the edge. AWS Panorama enables tasks to be automated that domain-specific libraries that reduces complexity and
have traditionally required human inspection to improve visibility into potential issues. For speeds time to market.
example, AWS Panorama can be used to track assets for optimising operations in facilities The rugged design of the ThinkEdge SE70
and monitoring inventory levels on retail shelves – even in environments with limited combined with powerful processing power and
internet bandwidth. flexible configurations position the solution as critical
The new ThinkEdge AI-capable edge appliance is powered by NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX, infrastructure for smart networks supporting real-time
a production-ready, high-performance, small form factor, power-efficient system on module decision making in new hybrid business models with
that is cloud-managed for enhanced security and ease of training and deploying a variety of advanced automation.
AI and machine learning models to the edge. It delivers up to 21 trillion operations/second
(TOPS) of accelerated compute, runs modern neural networks in parallel and processes [i] IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IoT 2020 Predictions
data from multiple high-resolution sensors. Jetson Xavier NX leverages NVIDIA CUDA-X™, a [ii] IDG - Early Adopters See Value in Computer Vision

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