Cisco named market chief in Omdia Industrial Edge Networking Parts 2021 report

Industrial edge networks are in all places—in factories, ports and terminals, roadways and intersections, mines, and even vineyards. They join folks, purposes, and industrial belongings like sensors, actuators, industrial management programs, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), human-machine interfaces, robots, and many others. These edge networks are the inspiration for large-scale digital transformation applications that make operations and belongings extra environment friendly, introduce new providers and income streams, scale back prices, and improve buyer satisfaction.

An all-inclusive industrial community portfolio

An entire industrial community resolution requires many sorts of {hardware} and software program—together with community infrastructure (routers, switches, and gateways), administration software program, and cybersecurity. Our industrial networking portfolio contains every little thing it is advisable to construct a scalable, high-performing, and safe industrial community. We’ve been perfecting our industrial edge expertise for a number of years, and it’s gratifying to me that the analyst agency Omdia reported that Cisco leads each section of the economic networking market.

Should-haves for industrial community options

Industrial switches and routers share some necessities with enterprise units. Efficiency, reliability, and safety are important. They should be straightforward to handle with succesful administration instruments. (Edge places like factories and utility substations sometimes don’t have extremely expert IT workers.) Industrial switches and routers even have some distinctive necessities, equivalent to withstanding harsh environmental circumstances and availability in form-factors equivalent to DIN-Rail or wall mount slightly than simply rackmounts to slot in tight areas. Right here’s a good weblog summarizing what’s totally different about industrial units.

5 developments in industrial networking

In Omdia’s new report, Industrial Edge Networking Parts: 2021 Evaluation, an excerpt of which will be discovered right here, Omdia factors to a number of developments driving the expansion of business networks.

1 – IT-OT convergence. Profitable industrial networks are a joint venture for IT and OT. IT brings the talents and instruments for community administration and cybersecurity. OT understands the position of every asset in manufacturing. How they want to hook up with the community, how they should speak to one another, take them safely offline, and many others. Subsequently, IT and OT should work collectively for a profitable end result. Cisco allows this partnership with a shared set of administration and safety instruments. For instance, learn this resolution temporary to see how industrial networks can profit from this convergence.

2 – Cloud-edge convergence. Organizations are combining cloud and edge computing—utilizing every expertise for various kinds of selections. Contemplate a time-sensitive choice, like re-routing an autonomous mining automobile when the digital camera detects an impediment. Making the choice on the edge—on industrial routers working Cisco Edge Intelligence software program—avoids delays whereas knowledge travels to the cloud and the choice travels again. (Try this weblog on edge Intelligence in oil and fuel.) Alternatively, networking units may gather related knowledge from the community and related endpoints to ship to the cloud for selections or evaluation that requires excessive compute energy or storage.

 

3 – Cybersecurity. Greater than 50% of producing corporations skilled a breach between 2017 to 2020, in keeping with Omdia, and 40% of breaches affected manufacturing. To guard operations, we suggest creating and implementing a constant safety coverage throughout each IT and OT networks. We make that easier with our complete industrial cybersecurity resolution, Cisco Industrial Safety. For extra, I like to recommend this weblog on securing industrial networks.

4 – Visibility. Having an correct stock of all of your industrial belongings and monitoring them to identify potential points sooner permits you to act sooner—ideally earlier than they have an effect on operations. OT groups can spot irregular system conduct with Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient. It brings visibility to related belongings to construct stock, repeatedly displays asset conduct to evaluate their safety postures, and helps operational groups troubleshoot points to make sure manufacturing continuity, resilience, and security. Cyber Imaginative and prescient is embedded into our industrial networking gear.

IT groups have higher visibility into the community and might maintain tabs on its efficiency with NetFlow and telemetry knowledge that our units present with community administration instruments like Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard, Cisco IoT Subject Community Director, Cisco vManage, or Cisco DNA Heart. Discovering points early provides you an opportunity to unravel them earlier than they change into issues.

5 – New applied sciences and open requirements. Omdia provides a shout out to 5G wi-fi for low latency, dependable communications in industrial settings. Our industrial routers help open requirements and have a replaceable communications module. So, if 5G isn’t accessible in your space immediately, you can begin with one other wi-fi module (3G, personal or public 4G LTE, and many others.) and swap out the module later. All these connectivity choices will be managed from a single dashboard.

 

Reliability guidelines

To Omdia’s top-5 developments powering the expansion of business networks I’ll add yet another: reliability. Downtime in industrial environments isn’t simply an annoyance. It may possibly decimate revenues and interrupt crucial infrastructure providers. We designed our industrial networking merchandise with resilience in thoughts. Our switches use high-availability protocols to maintain the community working with no downtime if a element fails. Our routers have redundant elements. For instance, a utility introducing superior metering infrastructure and demand response can configure its routers with a number of transport modules (e.g., MPLS, broadband, 4G LTE, or 5G and FirstNet) and with twin SIMs to hook up with totally different mobile suppliers.

Take the subsequent step

Omdia expects industrial networks will proceed to develop into the foreseeable future. To succeed in your targets sooner, take a look at our options to make your industrial networks revolutionary, safe, dependable, and good.

Study extra

 

Subscribe to our e-newsletter to maintain up with the most recent Web of Issues developments and insights that can assist you succeed together with your IoT deployments.

Share: