SHARE

Dell and Software AG Partner for Edge Analytics, Predictive Maintenance

Companies will focus on streaming analytics from gateways for predictive maintenance.

Written By

Jun 15, 2016

Dell and Software AG announced they are teaming up to launch a new IoT infrastructure that allows enterprises to perform real-time streaming analytics on edge devices.

According to the June 15 announcement, Dell’s Edge Gateway 5000 series, designed for tough environments, will be embedded with Software AG’s Apama Streaming Analytics. The ability to do streaming analytics at the edge cuts costs by eliminating the need for central servers and reduces the load on IoT sensor traffic, the companies said.

“The solutions built on this new architecture offer customers maximum flexibility in building IoT applications,” said Frank Schiewer, Software AG’s senior vice president of global alliances and channel. “A common set of streaming analytic tools at the edge and in the core and automated decisions made where needed combines effectiveness with efficiency.”

The new infrastructure will initially focus on analytics for predictive maintenance, the announcement stated, but additional IoT use cases will be added in the future.

To start, Dell and Software AG have created a Predictive Maintenance Blueprint entitled “Six Steps to Using the IoT to Deliver Maintenance Efficiency.” The blueprint will ensure only meaningful data is sent to cloud and that perishable data is acted on immediately with alerts and automated responses. The reduced data set can be integrated with historical data at the core to identify longer term trends and events.

With the surge of connected devices — Gartner estimates 25 billon IoT devices by 2020 — both companies say that having streaming analytics as close to the edge as possible is crucial to decrease latency times, reduce network traffic, and reduce the need for central server power.

RTInsights Take: Streaming analytics from edge devices is crucial for predictive maintenance applications, since data that tells a company when to shut off or repair a device often needs to be acted on immediately, and might lose its value if sent to the cloud. The partnership between Dell and Software AG also marks a growing trend for collaborations in the edge analytics space, including between IBM and Cisco; Dell and SAP; and HP Enterprise, GE Digital, PTC, and National Instruments.