Cloud Computing

Connecting Industrial Protocols and the Cloud

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November 22, 2022

Why Connect Industrial Protocols with Cloud

Industrial protocols are conversations between industrial automation products for data collection or control. At the beginning of industrial automation, communications were a competitive differentiator, and automation vendors developed communication protocols to leverage technical advantage and lock in their customer base. It has changed with time; today, vendors have extended their protocols and even designated them industry standards to boost adoption. Vendors acknowledged that suppliers with the largest ecosystem of products to choose from, would have a better livelihood of winning parts of a project, if not the complete project. Vendors also learned that it is challenging to be a specialist in all areas of automation. Let’s find out different industrial protocols and those that can be compatible with cloud applications.

Different Types of Industrial Protocols

With time, the manufacturing marketplace has become prevailing by a set of protocols, possibly from the leading suppliers of automation products. Before examining the best-suited for the cloud, let’s know some of the most common industrial protocols. These include protocols such as Modbus, Profinet, CC-Link, Ethernet IP, etc. Many of these are present in different forms to acknowledge varying topologies and purposes eg-dedicated wires vs. Ethernet.

Attempt to bring standardization over the years fetched technology from the OPC Foundation, which was originally Microsoft technology-based, using COM and DCOM Windows technologies for communications between applications. Hence, OPC (OLE for Process Control – OLE that is, Object Linking and Embedding – the technology after COM) is delivered.

1: OPC

OPC obtained standards for accessing data, either subscribing or polling, and the purpose of different data types and how to manage them (Analog and Discrete variables, History Data, Alarms, and Events, among others).

In time, this standardization endeavor shifted from windows technology-centric to operating system-agnostic to aiding Linux and delivering functionality that would be useful to Internet-based communications.

2: OPC UA

The new standard was recognized as OPC UA- with OPC now representing Open Process Communications and UA representing Unified Architecture, one standard to supersede the previous standards that had developed.

3: MQTT

Another technology that is more concentrated on the transfer of messages and less on the content of messages generated out of the need for a very distributed infrastructure with limited bandwidth, as found in the upstream oil and gas market. This protocol is known as MQTT. It is used in the industrial automation marketplace, specifically for cloud communications, and has become very popular in recent years.

4: BACnet

The vertical market shows unique requirements and has supported the requirement for unique developments. BACnet is the leading protocol in the Building Automation Systems (BAS) space. In the Power Generation and Distribution Space, several protocols like IEC-61850, 60870, and DNP-3.

Over time, these protocols have survived on various topologies, and today most of them offer Ethernet compatibility.

Why is the Cloud So Important?

The advantages of cloud computing are numerous and stimulating. They possess:

Transformation of capital expenditures to operational expenditures
No need to concentrate on infrastructure management
Benefiting a constantly scalable architecture
Furnishing accessibility to your absolute organization, anywhere and anytime
Benefiting services from domain experts (security, upgrades, solution development)

The cloud can endure different forms, from a solution delivery by industry leaders like Microsoft and Amazon to more scaled offerings for targeted markets. Ultimately, there are hosted solutions, pushing on-premise servers to virtual servers in the cloud, but fully controlled by the IT staff of the organization.

The objective of cloud computing is to provide a lower total cost of ownership by reducing expenses in system management and hardware ownership and the capability to take advantage of solutions offered by others. These third-party solutions are usually built for market purpose and provides multi-tenant capability, letting the service provider handle many customers whilst offering data and user isolation. The concept of cloud computing, specifically for the industrial marketplace, is still in its initial stage, and businesses are fighting with cloud connectivity and the idea of hosting their data to the outside world.

However, the benefits are convincing as it reduces operating costs, and domain experts have developed vertical market applications that require connectivity to the correct data. Additionally, service providers can utilize knowledge gained over their extensive array of customers and offer great value to an individual customer. So, the failure mode of a product in an environment can be predicted by learning about the failure mode in other environments. It helps in potential predictive analytics tuned by the results and anonymization of data from a similar ecosystem of users. While connecting to the cloud, evaluating which industrial protocols best suit the application is necessary.

Things to Consider When Connecting to the Cloud

The best attributes offered by cloud-based solutions fall into two main categories:

Security ( including access security and cybersecurity)
Transmission (the quality and reliability of data)

Security is mainly managed using VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). It is an excellent way for bi-directional and ad-hoc communications as it is designed for remote troubleshooting. Using VPNs for ad hoc access, customers can use solutions to secure and broker access to endpoints in a very organized and controlled way. It includes approval processes, windows of access and time limitations, and extra levels of authentication.

For information communication to the cloud, it is becoming more prevalent to utilize public-subscribe models and connection brokers to enhance security. Remote sites will share data to a tight and secure connection. The users of data and cloud applications will subscribe to the data through a broker, eradicating application knowledge of remote communication details that illustrate an exposure. Microsoft IoT Hub is the best example of this technology.

Industrial Protocols for Cloud Connectivity

It is optional that all industrial protocols are compatible. Without knowing each protocol and determining if it can be integrated into a cloud, a complete solution to the connectivity issue is to add edge device technology. It will manage the communications to the IT and OT environment and the need for cloud data transfer. Their devices are now covering the market with specific cloud connectivity or a toolkit approach that can be eased their configuration. Most of them are designed with data transfer as their primary function, whereas others support data modeling, visualization, and analytics, in addition to data transfer.

Ethernet is also improving with time in both topology and performance. A more visible improvement is device synchronization and the power to shape traffic. These attributes and other things are Ethernet enhancement called TSN (Time Sensitive Networking). TSN promises the skills to prioritize communications on Ethernet and control traffic bandwidth.

Connecting Safely and Securely

With the expansion of industrial protocols in the market, it is now feasible and easy to connect virtually any automation solution to the cloud with complete privacy, directly or using edge gateways.

Which solution is best for your Connected Device- Edge or Cloud Computing_

admin

September 5, 2022

Which Solution is Best for Your Connected Device – Edge or Cloud Computing?

If you have adopted IoT and are developing an IoT-connected device, you may wish to do some valuable computation to resolve the important issues that have been hindering growth. You might be desiring to install sensors in remote locations, create a device that can do data analytics to watch a renewable energy source, or develop health-related devices that can detect the early signs of diseases.

While creating the IoT-enabled device or IoT solution, at some point, you might get into a dilemma where you have to choose between edge or cloud computation. But what would be best for your device? Where should your device do the valuable computations in the cloud or at the edge?

Selecting between computing on edge or cloud can be an impacting decision, like it can influence a device’s efficiency or cost. Therefore, everyone does great research and thinks twice to avoid the cost of making the wrong decision and then the money spent correcting it.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud- It is a collection of servers accessed over the internet. Some renowned cloud providers are Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud.

These servers offer on-demand computing resources for data processing and storage purposes. You can easily say that cloud is a centralized platform for storing your files and programs, and you can easily connect any device to the cloud to access the data. Some of the cloud-based services are Dropbox or Google Drive etc.

Cloud computing is the process of doing computation in the cloud. These computations include data analysis and visualization, machine learning, and computer vision.

What is Edge Computing?

Edge is described as the “edge” of the network that includes devices at entry or exit points of the cloud, but it is not a part of the cloud. For instance, a server in a data center is part of the cloud; however, smartphones and routers that connect to that server are part of the edge.

Edge computing can be defined as the process of performing computations on edge. In this, the processing is completed closer or at the location where data is collected or acted.

One example of an edge computing process is object detection attached to an autonomous vehicle. The vehicle processes the data from its sensors and utilizes the result to avoid obstacles. In this process, the data is processed locally rather than sent to the cloud.

What are the points to be considered?

Before opting between edge and cloud computing, a few key questions must be considered.

Quality of Your Device’s Network

Conducting computation on the cloud can be beneficial if you have high bandwidth, low latency, and a sturdy connection to the internet, as you’ll have to send your data back and forth between cloud servers and your devices. If you have to use your device, for example, in an office or home with a steady internet connection, this back and forth can be done seamlessly. In most cases, if computation is conducted on edge, it won’t be affected by the bad or lost internet connection in a distant place. The processing can continue as it is not performed in the cloud. You would never want your vehicle’s objection detection to be failed while driving on the road. It is one of the reasons why autonomous vehicles perform computations like object detection on edge.

How Swift and How Often Does Your Data Need to be Processed?

Edge computing can be best suited in cases where customers demand response times from devices prompt than waiting for it in a decent network connection, such as monitoring components of the device.

The latency of the travel time between the cloud and the device can be minimized or eliminated. It means data can be processed immediately. It implies that if data processing is quick, one can achieve real-time responses from the devices. Cloud computation is also useful when device use is unsteady. For example, smart home devices running computation in the cloud allows sharing of the same computing resources between multiple customers. This decrease costs by restraining the need to provide the device with upgraded hardware to run the data processing.

What Part of Your Data is Crucial to You?

Computing on edge is helpful if you are only concerned about the result of your data after it has been processed. One can only send only important things for long-term storage in the cloud, which may cut down the expense of data storage and processing in the cloud. Suppose you are developing a traffic surveillance device that needs to inform about the congestion situation on the road. You could pre-process the videos on edge- instead of running hours of raw video in the cloud-one can send images or clips of the traffic only when it is present.

Do you know Your Devices’ Power and Size Limitations?

If you think your device will be limited in size and power, provided it has a strong network connection, sending the computing work to be done on the cloud will permit your device to remain small and low-power. For example, Amazon Alexa and Google Home capture the audio and send it to the cloud for processing, letting complex computations run on the audio as it can not run on the small computers inside the device themselves.

Data Processing Model Your Intellectual Property?

If you are creating a device for costumer and the methods you are adopting to process data are part of Intellectual Property, you must rethink the plan to protect it. Placing your IP on your device without a proper security plan can make your device vulnerable to hacks. If you are unaware of resources to secure your IP on edge, it is best to opt for the cloud, which already has security measures.

Final Reasons for Choosing Between Edge and Cloud Computing

Hence, we can conclude that one must consider a few things when choosing between computing on edge or the cloud. In complex issues, you might find the combination of both very beneficial by leaving some parts of processing on the cloud and rest on the edge.

Why Private cloud is the first choice of Businesses when it comes to IoT

admin

January 11, 2022

Why Private Cloud is the First Choice of Businesses When it Comes to IoT?

Today, terms like smart refrigerator or smart town or home security system and many other words are familiar with everyone. Not just this, people even know that how these devices fit into the Internet of Things (IoT). Besides changing the lives of individuals, IoT has become a boon for businesses as it helps in making it more effective and efficient. Through automated sensors attached to packages or vehicles to inform the organization about the supply chain status, devices to monitor and track business development processes, or create more customer engagement, IoT provides every possible solution to help businesses grow and succeed.

Another business-outlook changing tool that is helpful for devices within the IoT is the cloud. It is an interconnected network of servers that store data for individuals and businesses alike. Individuals opt cloud for storing files on iCloud instead of saving on phone or computer, while companies use the cloud for business processes, mainly to store data from IoT systems.

Do you know the Difference Between a Private and Public Cloud?

Well, it’s not mandatory to have a cloud for IoT systems because the operations of IoT systems can even take place locally rather than on the cloud through a connection to the internet. Yet, using the cloud for IoT systems within your business might help in reducing costs and scale that often accompany cloud use.

Organizations can opt for either a private cloud, a public cloud, or a hybrid cloud for cloud use. It is necessary to know the pros and cons of all three cloud services. One of the most popular types of cloud service, especially for individual use, is the public cloud. In this, a third-party service provider owns this cloud but will not be responsible for any maintenance or infrastructure. Google Drive, Amazon Web Services, and iCloud are some examples of public clouds.

In a private cloud, the stored data and information are only available and can be accessed by the organization for which it was developed. This implies that Private Clouds offer more control over their data to the organization. Private clouds are the first preference of organizations like financial institutions or government institutions because they deal with sensitive information.

The third option is the hybrid cloud. These are a blend of private and public clouds. This combination empowers organizations to customize which cloud type to use for better results.

Benefits offered by Private Cloud for businesses:

There are many reasons for which a company may opt to work with a private cloud:

Protects Company Data:

Companies that have adopted IoT systems and devices experience immense data flow. This data helps churn valuable insights that can help the business to improve and grow. It is now apparent why organizations are concerned with data security. Private clouds have dedicated service providers that enable organizations to control data firmly. In this, the organization is responsible for installing and maintaining the cloud infrastructure so they can manage their valuable data in a better way.

Improves Productivity and Efficiency:

One of the main reasons for opting for private cloud over others is its features that promise efficiency and productivity in a business. An organization can prosper when they are concerned more about improving productivity among their employees.

Choosing a private cloud can improve a company’s efficiency by:

Facilitating a business’s data usage and storage
Enabling communication among co-workers more comfortable and faster
Providing more flexibility and customization that allows systems to comply with special regulations or standards within the company or industry
Offering employees better file-sharing capabilities

Additional Benefits:

There are several other benefits organizations may enjoy with private cloud usage, such as:

The Expenditure. While it may seem as if a public cloud may be the more affordable option in many cases; however as per a report shared in 2019 concluded from 451 Research reveals that private cloud computing, mainly if it runs on a reliable single-tenant VMware are found to be less costly for some businesses.
More Efficient Decision: A company is dependent on data and wishes to store data that can help in making significant business decisions on a more local level instead of sending data to a centralized location for processing purposes and proper analysis.
Less Latency: On-premises management of systems and devices can promise faster data connectivity between servers and devices, lowering latency and permitting businesses to operate promptly.
Proper Integration With Existing IoT Systems: An organization can easily integrate IoT systems with new systems more efficiently if they can physically access their data management system.

Conclusion:

In this fast-changing world, it has become mandatory to reevaluate the decisions made for the business benefit. Cloud computing is proliferating, so it has become obligatory to consider the future of cloud services for media, individuals, and businesses.

While considering cloud services for your business, be sure about the requirements of your business and opt for the most fitting cloud. Are you looking for cloud migration? Contact us to get the most reliable and result-focused services.

How is Cloud Computing Improving the Healthcare Industry

admin

January 27, 2021

How is Cloud Computing Improving the Healthcare Industry?

Healthcare is one of the industries which do not hesitate to embrace the latest technologies. It has wholly accepted and discovered the true potential of cloud-based healthcare solutions.

BCC research states that the Compound Annual Growth Rate of cloud computing services and solutions will have around more than 15% increase until 2025. At the end of 2025, the cloud-connected healthcare industry will be about $55 BN. Today more than 83% of the healthcare industry is already welcoming cloud and replacing it with their old system.

Today, cloud administers essential applications to keep the hospital operations active without any obstacles. It analyses patterns from unstructured data to assist doctors for better diagnosis and allows patients to remotely view their medical reports and prescription by accessing data saved over the cloud.

Let’s check how cloud computing is bringing change in the healthcare industry and revolutionizing patient care, diagnosis, data security and many other things.

Centralized Medical Record Accessibility:

We all are well aware of how hospitals were highly dependent on paperwork and file. Well, all the patients had separate files or records containing their personal details and about the number of visits in the hospital. To maintain and manage the files was challenging and complicated tasks for both doctors and staff. Thanks to the cloud, today, all the medical reports and files are located at one centralized location accessible through the web portal at healthcare centres. Paperwork is replaced, and whole management is made simple via cloud migration.

Most organizations use AWS S3 service from AWS or Blob storage from Azure to save and retrieve medical record files. Even, the system can fix periodical backup through services such as Glacier of AWS. Patients do not have to panic for the lost files or papers and in fact, need not carry the physical files.

By using a stable and safe cloud platform, details can be accessed from anywhere at any time. This helps doctors diagnose patients promptly through swift access to medical records stored over cloud storage or even in dedicated hosting solutions.

Assuring Medical Record Security Complying with Healthcare Standards:

Today, when we have cloud-powered healthcare solutions, we can quickly notice that cloud-integrated healthcare solutions are more robust and effective. The data stored over the cloud are highly secured compared to physical records and can be only accessed by the relevant healthcare provider whenever required. This security offered by the cloud avoids many unnecessary situations which increases the chances of information leakage.

Robust Patient Engagement Improving Patient Care:

Well, we can say that a cloud-based health solution guarantees for better patient care. In a click, a patient can book his/her appointment with a specific doctor. Not just this, auto-reminders are sent to doctors as well as patients for the upcoming check-up schedules through cloud platform’s help via SMS or an Email. Follow-up processes of the patient can also be performed through such services. Regular communication with a health professional, especially after surgery or operation, a timely reminder for medicine consumption, expected facility details and many other things can be handled by the cloud platform. Doctors can even monitor patient vitals from their place through the help of cloud-connected medical infusion pumps. This particular feature helps the doctor to take a quick decision and saves the patient’s life.

Healthcare Analytics for Better Decision Making:

Health care organizations use machine learning models based on cloud data and other superior solutions to perform clinical and medical device data analytics. Adopting cloud-based solutions and other latest solutions helps organizations get genuine and insightful data, visualization, and analysis. The immense amount and variety of data, i.e. structure, unstructured and streaming data in healthcare and life sciences need highly scalable platforms for storing, data analyzing and managing predictive models which can support real-time decision-making.

For example,

AWS CloudWatch Synthetics provides the monitoring of end-devices every minute, 24*7 and sends alerts when your application endpoint does not behave normally. CloudWatch Synthetics offers monitoring of URLs, REST API and website content. It checks unauthorized changes caused by phishing, code injection and cross-site scripting.

Superior Scalability Under Any Circumstances:

Cloud-based healthcare solutions are highly scalable and provide an option to scale up/down infrastructure to support new data as per requirement without any delay. The best example to put in right now is- the current COVID pandemic has put lives at a challenging place. It has caused a significant strain on healthcare. A cloud solution has appeared as the best solution in such unpredicted situations. AWS auto-scaling and load balancing services are highly adopted and recommended by many health organizations/hospitals in the current situation.

Cost-Effective Solution with Custom Payment Models:

Using cloud infrastructure helps an organization in reducing cost on-premise computer networking. This ultimately causes a significant reduction in the overall costs of IT staff and management solutions. In fact, organizations do not have to worry about updating or adopting new changes as it is possible in a very smooth way with the help of cloud service providers in no time.

Cloud platform providers like Azure and AWS offer a pay-as-you-go approach for more than 160 cloud services. This model provides organizations flexibility as they can pay only for the individual services they need and as long as they use them. This means there is no need for extended term contracts or complex licensing. The pricing calculator tool helps in knowing the cost of services in advance.

Conclusion

This is how cloud computing is improving the healthcare sector. It also cuts off IT costs, enhances data backup, protects from data loss, provides medical device integration and many other leverages. We can simply conclude that the cloud provides economic and functional benefits for everyone, either its doctor or patient or healthcare organizations.

There are many highly proficient healthcare solution providers with years experience in providing cloud services and solutions can help chartering sound medical-grade FDA/HIPAA compliant cloud, cloud data analytics, a cloud-connected app for monitoring health, connected medical diagnostic devices development, cloud-connected drug delivery system etc. Cloud is ultimately transforming healthcare and making it more reliable and prompt through digitalization.

admin

October 12, 2020

Why does Your Organization Need to Shift to the Cloud?

Today organization, either small or medium or large, are looking for more business value from their data. Business data has become spinal of businesses because every decision and actions are dependent on it. Thus, the increased dependency has increased the pressure on data executives to access, manage and distribute and analyze the data coming out from different sources before it becomes worthless.

The task of processing the volume data are both challenging as well as expensive with legacy systems, architectures and storages plans while shifting organizations towards cloud migration. The shift to cloud migration can cut off the cost and increase access and viability.

Well, the reason for a shift can be different for different organizations and is based on the organization’s need.

Here the list of few common reasons for shifting to the cloud:

Consumption-based model: The consumption-based model is one of the beneficial advantage offered by the cloud. The high price of storage, servers and operations designed for on-premises implementations are the reason for the switch to clouds. Cloud provides a utility-based model which allows user to pay for ‘what and when’ it is used.
Value-added insights: Aquiring value-added insights from the data is a goal of organizations. The available ongoing costly solution requires high maintenance due to the complex and massive data flow. The traditional data warehouse solutions are not capable of meeting the needs of an organization and does not provide value-added insights for better results.
Reaching end-of-life/end-of-support: The traditional platforms and technologies are not capable of reaching end-of-life/end-of-support or scale-up. Cloud Migration that results from data warehouses is capable of reaching the end of life/support by the provider.
Leveraging analytics and AI/ML: Old platforms and warehouse solutions disappoint in leveraging analytics and AI/ML for extracting better business insights. They fail to support organizations in meeting the set objectives and goals. On the other hand, they require a high cost of maintenance too.

Well, if you have decided for cloud migration, then let’s get to ‘where’ and ‘how’ questions directly.

From where to start for migration?

Suppose an organization has made a mind for cloud migration, then the most important question which strikes in mind is ” where to start?”. Cloud migration is no different from any large transformational initiatives as it involves a logical starting point. The already existing data warehouse is actually a starting point because it stores a large amount of data.

Read More: Six Inevitable Steps to Bring Digital Transformation in Your Business

How to start?

The database migration or complete end-to-end cloud migration requires a whole focus on the source of the transformational initiative.

Some of the success factors which can help in cloud migration are as follows:

A) Developing a strong business use case resonates across the organization. It ensures clarity, provides vision, offers strategic guidance for initiative and provides a methodology to measure success. A well-designed business use case involves different technologies, platforms and IT. It provides a common framework to deliver optimal value.

B) Keeping knowledge of current state and future state while sharing a common perspective across the organization is essential. This involves cross-checking the technical architecture, understanding the cultural and political dynamics present around the initiative. When everything is clear that is a solid understanding of the current state and its requirement, future goals and objectives and existing gaps, then a precisely planned roadmap can be efficiently followed for near-term or long-term value.

C) While undertaking a data-driven program, one should follow the set standard and requirements for collection, identification, storage purposes. Data governance involves unstructured data, semi-structured data, structured data, registries, taxonomies and ontologies as it contributes to organizational success through regular and compliant practices. Guidelines from administration need to discuss all types of new data requirements that must be included as a part of any new program. Thus this must be addressed at the source to ensure that the resulting insight can be trusted to assist the organization in achieving value from the investment made.

D) Precise planning and keeping an eye on future guarantees success. Today, new tools and technologies are available in the market. Creating a well-planned data strategy allows organizations to scale-up and nurture their investment in a most-favourable manner. Data strategy recognizes the critical skills required and what is needed to achieve business objectives, plans and strategies.

A complete data strategy will also help in overviewing data management and assures that all essential steps involved in the modernization process are followed. The modernization process involves data migration, cleansing, standardization, and governance.

To confirm long-term, scalable and sustainable data program, an organization must go for single approach instead of being involved in different projects for the same purpose. Disparate projects do not lay the required right foundation for business transformation. An enterprise data warehouse implementation or modernization is not an easy task. Still, a precisely-designed, well-socialized, futuristic strategy supported by the right level of capability can assist organizations in achieving their objectives.

Prompt Softech is an IT company working with a motive to elevate businesses through innovative and smart technologies. The IT company assists businesses which require cloud migration. The Softech company gives priority to the current need of businesses and delivers the most fitting solutions. If you wish to benefit more from the data, then must switch to the cloud and enjoy the advantage by generating the business value data.

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