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Thirty-four-year-old networking supplier B&B Electronics has changed its name to B+B SmartWorx. While continuing the tradition of developing mission-critical network connectivity technology for remote or demanding environments, B+B SmartWorx is ramping up the intelligence in that connectivity piece, embedding intelligence throughout the network connectivity stack, from edge device to network backbone.
B+B's latest technologies have led the company to this new position in the Internet of Things (IoT) industry and the decision to change its name. Those technologies – the Wzzard Intelligent Sensing Platform for creating wireless sensor networks (WSNs) where customer applications and logic reside at the network edge, and its SWARM intelligence-based cellular edge gateway devices – combine to form the B+B SmartWorx IoT Edge Processing Architecture.
Engineered for environments where existing equipment and networks are too valuable to ignore or replace, B+B's edge processing architecture adds new layers of functionality, efficiency, productivity and scalability to existing M2M data networks, allowing integrators and VARS to evolve their customers' existing networks into more autonomous and decisive IoT systems.
The company's edge processing technology helps bridge the gap between IT and OT (operational technology). It aggregates data from existing equipment, translates disparate machine protocols into a language IT can understand, transforms that data into useful information and delivers it to applications ready for analysis, leading to actionable intelligence.
The architecture is service led with decoupled data methodologies, capabilities traditionally limited to the enterprise middleware level or above. B+B brings these principles into the edge, eliminating the current equivalence between an edge and a single physical device, and instead replacing it with a logical edge based upon multiple devices and distributed SWARM intelligence.
SWARM intelligence is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural (like ants or bees) or artificial, that accomplishes a single goal even if no individual is in charge. Simple components accomplish sophisticated tasks by following simple rule sets and working in groups.
The B+B SmartWorx IoT Edge Processing Architecture allows a collection of physical devices, each performing relatively simple tasks, to operate as a single SWARM system which is almost infinitely expandable, both with physical interfaces, and processing and memory resources. SWARM increases the user's ROI over the lifetime of an installation, and makes it easy and cost-effective to develop, deploy, manage and maintain highly-scalable edge device networking solutions.
Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), Operational Technology, Network Connectivity, Edge Processing Technology, ARC Advisory Group.