This gives companies the opportunity not only to process the rapidly growing volumes of data relating to machines and production processes into important information at the necessary speed, but also to create greater flexibility and automation as well as cost savings by virtualizing the OT environment. With its technology partner SDA, for example, VMware is laying the foundations for virtualizing control modules (PLC/PLC). This is because most of these are still handled via semi-automatic patching using a USB stick on the respective device and are not yet controlled via a central management console. Virtualization at the edge not only makes the management of PLC modules more efficient, but also reduces the complexity and dependency on resources for updates.

It is obvious that manufacturing is at the heart of many sustainability initiatives. In Europe alone, industry is one of the largest_{emitters of CO2}, with more than 880 million tons. By virtualizing the IT and OT footprint, an intelligent combination of cloud and edge technologies, companies can use tools such as Green Metrics and Carbon Footprint Value Calculators to operate more sustainably.

In both the B2C and B2B sectors, conventional products are becoming increasingly intelligent thanks to sensor technology and edge-native apps that interpret data in real time, enabling personalized services as well as remote monitoring and predictive maintenance.

In order to not only successfully launch smart products and services on the market, but also to scale and manage them efficiently, a suitable, flexible and scalable infrastructure and expertise in the area of application development and management is required. Security is also an essential core element at connectivity, application and data level.

Much of what VMware can offer on the data center side is also incorporated into the edge stack in order to design real-time features and the hypervisor level in such a way that they can be used at the manufacturing edge in highly distributed and sometimes hard-to-reach environments:

■ Real-time features allow deterministic behaviour despite virtualization. This means that production-critical machine/control elements such as PLCs and IPCs can also be virtualized, enabling direct control without direct human intervention on the element. The management of applications on robot platforms can also be simplified accordingly thanks to real-time functionality in the hypervisor.

■ As the requirements in manufacturing do not necessarily always have to be in real time, it is an advantage if non-real-time and real-time applications can be managed on the same platform and you do not have to set up and manage two or more virtual environments.

■ With regard to applications at the edge, companies should look for a solution that allows the continuous management of all applications.

■ An intrinsic security model allows security to be integrated at both application and data level.

Building ecosystems of industry partners and organizations creates sustainable initiatives. The requirements for process and data management are sometimes very complex and require technological support that allows data sovereignty as well as flexibility and integration capability from the edge to the cloud. Industrial customers should look to their IT suppliers for a Gaia-X-compliant architecture that offers an agnostic platform from the manufacturing edge through to multi-cloud environments.