IOTech Releases Edge Central 3.1, a Vendor-Neutral Edge Solution

Open edge computing vendor IOTech has released version 3.1 of Edge Central, the company’s commercialized version of the open-source EdgeX Foundry platform. Enhancements to Edge Central empower enterprises to leverage valuable industrial edge data, expediting time-to-market for industrial customer solutions without the risk of vendor lock-in. Edge Central is used in a variety of industries, such as manufacturing, industrial automation, energy, building automation, and transportation.

As a leader and major contributor in the EdgeX Foundry open-source community, IOTech has been deeply involved with the evolution of the third major version of the base platform. After significant architectural advancements in previous platform updates, this version of EdgeX prioritizes improved usability and simplified configuration.

Enhanced features in EdgeX version 3.1 include common and simplified configuration of the EdgeX services, the loading of configuration files from a remote location via URI, and reducing the number of file formats used for EdgeX configuration. EdgeX microservices are now required to authenticate with the use of tokens while running in secure mode, enhancing cybersecurity.

In addition to providing the assurance of software support for the new EdgeX Foundry technology, Edge Central provides value-added features that streamline customer solutions, including a scalable edge management capability that enables users to provision and monitor edge nodes, configure, orchestrate, monitor, and update their applications, and onboard their OT devices.

New product features introduced with Edge Central 3.1 include enhancements to the industrial OT device suite, including CANbus with J1939 extensions and extended OPC UA support. New out-of-the-box connectivity for Azure and AWS cloud services have increased its northbound cloud-streaming capabilities. The refreshed Edge Central User Interface (UI) also significantly enhances usability with service control and management options.  

For more information, including ongoing IoT Edge Platform research updates, please visit Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) Edge Compute Software Platforms.