‘ClearBlade – Transforming the developing IoT & Edge Computing market with their scalable software platform

There has been a lot of discussion over the past few years around being able to process and analyse data closer to the source, this is effectively what is called ‘the edge’. The edge means something different to everyone, like so many things in the technology space. How one interprets the edge really depends on how their data centre and network is designed and the amount of data points and devices they are interacting with. Edge Computing is the idea of reducing the distance of available compute and storage in order to process and analyse data at the location it is required. All cloud based platforms and technologies all have one enemy in common, latency. Everyone is now looking at ways to shorten the round trip of the data to reduce the time to value which basically means taking the data and doing something clever with it.

IoT (The Internet of Things) really burst onto the scenes around 2 years ago due to the advancement of components, better hardware and devices meant that we were moving into a sensor driven era. We now live in a world where technology advancements mean that we can now use sensors to measure four of the five human senses; touch, sight, sound, and taste in the form of e-tongues. E-tongues can be placed on certain types of sensors and are used in liquid environments to classify the contents of the liquid, identify the liquid itself, or sometimes to discriminate between samples.

The increase of IoT devices at the edge of the network is creating a data lake to be crunched and processed at data centres, providing additional load to network bandwidth which is often saturated and strained already. Improvements to data centre networks have been frequent and effective thanks to technology with some business’ opting for a software defined approach (software abstracts a layer of complexity which can then be serviced by commodity hardware). This still however doesn’t change the need to reduce both load and latency which can be critical to both data processing and application availability. This has led organisations to build Content Delivery Networks (CDN’s) to decouple both data and service provisioning, CDN’s allow people to access the data from the closest edge to them (Cloudflare & Akamai)

Edge Computing tries to move the processing from inside data centres towards the edge of the network, exploiting smart objects, mobile phones and network gateways to perform tasks and provide services on behalf of the cloud. By moving services to the edge, it is possible to provide content caching, service delivery, storage and IoT management resulting in better response times and transfer rates. This is why we are now seeing a shift from technology vendors to build ruggedised hardware with GPU processing power so much of the grunt work can be done at the edge rather than the data traversing the internet into internal data centre networks to be processed. NVIDIA are focusing a lot of effort into real time inferencing at the edge to solve the problem of real time data and analytics not being real time due to latency and round trip times.

The rise of Edge Computing & IoT brings about all manner of security concerns and problems, a lot of education needs to be undertaken in order for enterprises to fully understand the complexities and risk of distributing data and protecting edge end points. There is so much that can be done with IoT sensors and as Edge Computing matures, the world will start to see that guess work is no longer needed, a sensor can be placed in a fire hydrant that measures pressure, alerts and thresholds can notify maintenance crews as and when they need to attend, this is what’s known as predictive maintenance.

ClearBlade is not only disrupting this market but they are setting the tone and powering analytic platforms that will continue to harness actionable data to change the world as we know it. AI & Machine Learning maybe getting all the headlines but make no mistake, these areas are closely linked and advancements in one area only serve to fuel the other area. So what is ClearBlade?

ClearBlade is the Edge Computing software company enabling enterprises to rapidly engineer and run secure, real-time, scalable IoT applications. It was built for the enterprise from the ground up to run securely in any cloud, on-premise and at the edge over any data protocol. ClearBlade enables companies to ingest, analyse, adapt and act on any data in real-time and at extreme scale. Unleash your data at the edge by leveraging local compute, artificial intelligence and actionable visualisations while integrating with any enterprise system - all from a single platform, it ‘seamless, dynamic and unsurprisingly secure.

The ClearBlade Edge runs autonomously, independent of network connectivity - ensuring resiliency and security at all times. The patented communications-agnostic Auto Sync technology guarantees your environment is always up-to-date. ClearBlade is fully extensible with a suite of proven components and integrations to deliver solutions quickly and at scale. Providing a consistent platform and experience across edge, cloud and on-premise environments, ClearBlade runs everywhere and connects everything, securely. Some of the features are crucial to operations in this area:

·      Consistent platform across Cloud, On-Premise, and Edge environments.

·      Industrial Device Integration.

·      Industry leading security practices.

·      Sync + State Management .

·      Offline Continuity.

·      Business Rules & Events.

·      Scalability on any cloud, hybrid or on-premise infrastructure.

·      Full solution and device life-cycle management.

·      Fully open visualization solution.

·      Fully extensible architecture.

Some use cases for Edge Computing and IoT have been well documented but the applications are endless, what can be achieved? What is the art of the possible?

·      Connected Products - Digitise products, create new data-driven business models, and monetise delivered outcomes. Rapidly accelerate time to value.

·      Smart Buildings & Cities - Resource optimisation via real-time data aggregation across disparate commercial building systems. This area will no doubt be accelerated by the emergence of 5G.

·      Asset Tracking & Intelligence - Reduce labour costs, identify and improve equipment utilisation, and optimize asset performance. This in-turn accelerates business transformation in the form of ROI.

·      Remote Oil-Well Monitoring - Real time, remote monitoring of oil wells and equipment to improve operating efficiencies and mitigate losses.

·      Freight & Logistics - Improve both the safety and management of transportation resources via secure, real-time status, location, and disposition of assets.

·      Smart Rail - Worker safety and alerting, wayside monitoring, asset tracking, and predictive maintenance via real-time positioning and monitoring. An end to end monitoring solution.

·      Predictive Maintenance - Optimise maintenance schedules and costs based on real-time operations and historical metrics. Data driven decisions that drive real, measurable value.

·      Maritime Vessel Monitoring - Improve maritime safety and operational efficiencies by monitoring disparate ship systems in real time. This can be tied directly into Geospatial analytic platforms to drive seamless collaboration with Big Data, AI & ML, IoT, Edge Computing & Data Visualisation.

Data can be stored, modified, analysed, managed, and routed at the edge. Connectivity is provided via MQTT, REST, and Sockets, along with prebuilt patterns for Bluetooth low energy, Zigbee, Thread, and more. Both user and device states are synced with IoT systems as devices go online and off line.

Business rules can be set to trigger and react to events and analyse results locally via business logic (ClearBlade also seamlessly integrates into Business Intelligence platforms like Tableau as well as Dynamics 365). The Edge Platform, with its small footprint and no external dependencies, powers activities at the IoT edge, including near-real time business rules, filtering, online and offline modes, as well as messaging.

ClearBlade’s products are developer friendly and feature fully open APIs and SDKs, industry-leading security practices, reusable enterprise-grade solutions, device life-cycle management, customisable visualisations, and a future-proof architecture that seamlessly integrates new technologies and legacy systems.

So there you have it, IoT and Edge computing at a glance and a high level overview of a disruptive technology vendor that is making waves. I’ll be writing a whitepaper in collaboration with David Cooper (Cooper Engineering) which goes into more detail around current use cases and technology and we will look at how ClearBlade can affect sustainable agriculture, keep your eyes peeled.