Industrial Internet of Things, for Industry Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, With Moxa

15 January 2019 | 4534 Shares

Industrial installations in every sector are– we’d hope– built to last. As a result, looking at the average enterprise’s list of machinery, plant, sensors, controllers, and robots, we see a significant investment in time, money and resources, and we would be expecting to see ROI continue for as long as possible.

When it comes to digitization and what the press is calling Industrial IoT, many organizations of all sizes are turning to Moxa for a range of solutions and guidance that will continue to ensure ROI on legacy equipment, plus provide the ability to integrate new machines & plant as it comes on board.

Moxa helps companies with some or all of the following situations or stumbling blocks on the road to deploying IIoT, digital transformation, and using technology to power the business, both now and for the foreseeable future.

INTEROPERABILITY

With a range of converging technologies, legacy equipment that ‘speaks’ older or proprietary OT (operational technology) protocols can be integrated into a single platform that draws together all the different parts of the production environment.

Whether it’s letting devices exchange data from serial ports via ethernet, or converting Modbus, Ethernet/IP, PROFINET, PROFIBUS, and DNP3 (among others) into a single language, Moxa creates a new working environment where OT is interfaced with IT (information technology) seamlessly.

Smart gateways and I/O products provide systems whereby new installations of the very latest sensor arrays, attenuation systems, and intelligent devices are managed and controlled using the same methods as highly-specialized legacy plant.

Driving the IIoT solutions from Moxa is the notion that whichever tech systems or platforms you want to deploy (RESTful APIs, C++ libraries, public cloud services), the software and hardware from Moxa ensures the same technology can always be used– even for the oldest, most venerated machinery on your books.

SECURITY

As soon as IIoT data is networked, it becomes as susceptible to attack or compromise as any other sensitive network traffic stream. Moxa understands that security at the network level comprises multiple steps:

  • Ensuring device security, based on IEC 62443 standards. Preventing the compromise of devices one-by-one is an essential first step, best done with an expert’s eye, and utilizing a next-gen IIoT platform.
  • The need to virtually ‘divide’ the network into secure zones so that individual cells can be defended. Moxa’s routers, firewalls, packet inspection, and VLAN technologies ensure every network segment stays safely monitored.
  • By providing overviews and centralized monitoring, every device and each network point can be overseen and controlled, despite the range of different technologies that go to make up modern industrial deployments.

DEPLOY AT EDGE, THINK CLOUD

Isolated, silo-ed data only gains value when it’s connected or pooled in a meaningful way. By drawing together data from every edge location and every device, the business can spot trends, proactively monitor equipment, and draw the most return on investment from its industrial and technology installations.

Moxa has the knowledge and technology that will help you keep networks from reaching overload (and potentially damaging latency problems), with edge and network devices that have the power to provide intelligent real-time decision making.

By processing and filtering data at the edge, for instance, only relevant data gets shared with the rest of the enterprise. This minimizes network overheads and prevents data overload on automated systems and human overseers, too.

Moxa’s range of OT and IT aggregation devices, gateway interfaces, and robust IT systems mean that industrial organizations are deploying the very latest IIoT and network thinking to leverage the full technology stack safely.

To learn more about the ThingsPro Server, the ThingsPro Gateway designed for the edge, and the other elements to Moxa’s IIoT platform, get in touch with a representative today.