Perhaps one of the biggest roadblocks related to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is the inability to easily move manufacturing data into enterprise applications for analysis.
In an effort to overcome that hurdle, Kepware Technologies, a maker of industrial communication software, has released a gateway that pushes data coming from it’s KEPServerEX communication platform (used to connect a variety of automation devices and applications) directly into cloud-based analytics programs.
Kepware’s new IoT Gateway for KEPServerEX version 5.19—which supports over 150 communication protocols—streams real-time machine and sensor data from programmable automation controllers (PACs), programmable logic controllers (PLC), remote terminal units (RTUs), flow computers, OPC servers, and other industrial hardware and software, directly into Big Data applications.
Kepware has a similar product, called the Industrial Data Forwarder, but that is designed specifically for Splunk software and cloud services. The IoT Gateway, on the other hand, streams real-time machine data into a variety of Big Data and analytic software applications, allowing users to choose vendors and communication methodologies based on their organizational needs, the company said.
The IoT Gateway also offers measurement, verification and commissioning to ensure devices in the field operate as intended, as well as capacity planning, root-cause analysis, remote troubleshooting, safety compliance and cybersecurity. In addition it supports customizable data formats to ensure compatibility with the low-bandwidth messaging protocol MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Representational State Transfer (REST) used in web services applications.
“This new technology will help organizations extract business insights and even create new service-based revenue streams from previously untapped machine data,” said Kepware CEO Tony Paine. “The IoT Gateway allows us to extract even greater value from the data that KEPServerEX is already collecting. Furthermore, we believe this technology has the potential to help bridge the long-standing gap between Operations Technology and Information Technology.”
