Portfolio Architecture Examples: Edge Collection

This article is a continuation of a series of posts about our project named Portfolio Architectures. A previous post, Portfolio Architecture Examples: Healthcare Collection, begins with a project overview, introduction, and examples of tooling and workshops available for the project.  You may want to refer back to that post to gain insight into the background of Portfolio Architectures before reading further.  

Edge Collection

The collection featured today focuses on edge computing architectures. There are currently five architectures in this collection, and we'll provide a short overview of each, leaving the in-depth exploration as an exercise for the reader.

In each of these architecture overviews, you'll find a table of contents outlining the technologies used, several example schematic diagrams with descriptions, and a link in the last section to open the diagrams directly into the online tooling in your browser.

Cloud to Edge

This architecture covers the use case of providing a consistent infrastructure experience from cloud to edge and enabling modern containerized applications at the edge.

(Note: this project is a new architecture and currently in progress, so sharing one of the schematic architecture diagrams and you can monitor this project for updates as it progresses to completion.)

This use case is bringing cloud-like capabilities to the edge locations.

Data Center to Edge

This architecture covers the use case around data center to edge where the energy (utility) infrastructure companies operate across a vast geographical area that connects the upstream drilling operations with downstream fuel processing and delivery to customers. These companies need to monitor the condition of pipelines and other infrastructure for operational safety and optimization.

The use case is bringing computing closer to the edge by monitoring for potential issues with gas pipelines (edge).

Edge Manufacturing Efficiency

The manufacturing industry has consistently used technology to fuel innovation, production optimization, and operations. Now, with the combination of edge computing and AI/ML, manufacturers can benefit from bringing processing power closer to data. This helps actions be taken faster on things like errors and predictive maintenance.

The use case is for boosting manufacturing efficiency and product quality with artificial intelligence and machine learning out to the edge.

Edge Medical Diagnosis

This architecture covers edge medical diagnosis in the healthcare industry. It accelerates medical diagnosis using condition detection in medical imagery with AI/ML at medical facilities.

The use case is accelerating medical diagnosis using condition detection in medical imagery with AI/ML at medical facilities.

SCADA Interface Modernization

This Portfolio Architecture targets energy providers in North America that need to be compliant with NERC regulations and in order to achieve this they decide to modernize the interfaces between their business applications and their SCADA systems also for better consumption of information that can be used in combination with AI/ML and decision management tools to better address customer needs.

The use case is providing interfaces with SCADA systems that are compliant with NERC regulations, creating different layers of API gateways to protect business services depending on the network zones.

If you are interested in more architecture solutions like these, feel free to export the Portfolio Architecture Examples repository. More architecture collections include:

• Application development
• Automation
• Data engineering
• Finance
• Healthcare
• Infrastructure
• Retail
• Telco