Inductive Automation Reorchestrates its Edge Software

Extending its Ignition platform to the industrial network edge to help users place devices closer to the sources of data for collection, transfer and analysis has been a key focus for Inductive Automation for several years now. As part of this focus, Inductive Automation developed five edge products: Ignition Edge IIoT, Ignition Edge Panel, Edge Compute, Edge Sync Services and Edge EAM (enterprise administration module).  

The company recently announced that it is now combining those five edge products into two—Ignition Edge IIoT and Ignition Edge Panel. Inductive Automation stresses that the functionalities of the other three edge products are not disappearing. Instead, they are being rolled into the company’s two main edge platforms.

With these changes to Inductive Automation’s Ignition Edge products, here's how the company’s two edge products are now being positioned:

• Ignition Edge IIoT is designed to turn virtually any field device, such as a touch panel or a client terminal, into a lightweight, MQTT-enabled edge gateway that works with Ignition IIoT and other common IIoT platforms to provide remote data acquisition and optional secured feedback and control. This product now includes unlimited tags and device connections for included drivers, the ability to run scripts, create REST APIs, synchronize data to a central server and act as an EAM agent gateway. Inductive Automation says this product is “ideal for polling data at the device location and publishing data to an MQTT server that business systems and applications can access.”
• Ignition Edge Panel includes everything in Ignition Edge IIoT plus local visualization functionality for HMIs. Users can choose between Perspective (2 sessions) or Vision (1 local client, 1 remote client) as the visualization system for Edge Panel to build future-proof local control systems that are Industry 4.0-compatible. This product now includes unlimited tags and device connections for included drivers, the ability to publish MQTT data, run scripts, create REST APIs, synchronize data to a central server and act as an EAM agent gateway. According to Inductive Automation, Ignition Edge Panel is suited for standalone HMIs and providing a local-client fallback for field HMIs if the network connection is lost.