Fog Computing

Excerpt

By sharing IT resources over the Internet, cloud computing has led to substantial transformations involving the centralization and translocation of software, platforms, and infrastructure into the cloud. IT resources provided over the cloud are often more elastic and can more quickly adapt to customer requirements, while implementation and usage costs can be reduced (Weinhardt et al. 2009). For many firms these are important benefits, but cloud computing has technological limitations that restrict its use in specific application domains. One of these domains is Industry 4.0, i.e., the advanced digitization within production sites that is directly associated with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), connecting different types of machinery and promising more efficient production as well as new applications and business models (Lasi et al. 2014). In the context of Industry 4.0, cloud computing is confined for several reasons: Firstly, Industry 4.0 leads to substantial amounts of generated data that need to be analyzed, processed, and stored. Owing to limited bandwidth or unreliable Internet connections in production sites, it is often technologically challenging or very costly to transport data to and from the cloud. Secondly, analysis of Industry 4.0 data (e.g., from manufacturing or industrial control systems) often requires real time processing and interactions, which are difficult to guarantee with cloud services (Bonomi et al. 2012). Thirdly, many industry sensors and controllers have limited resources themselves, and therefore require larger computing power in Industry 4.0 scenarios. However, it is often not possible to connect them directly to the cloud (Chiang and Zhang 2016). Lastly, security and privacy have remained important issues in cloud environments. Especially in confidential production environments, manufacturers may not want or may not be allowed to transfer data to the cloud, for instance, due to customer specifications. Owing to these limitations, a technological paradigm beyond cloud computing is required to support the diffusion of Industry 4.0. …