Advantech partners with five leading companies in creating the Edgecross Consortium for Industry 4.0

Advantech has partnered with Mitsubishi Electric, Omron, NEC, IBM Japan and Oracle Japan to establish the ‘Edgecross Consortium’ to overcome boundaries between companies and industries in order to realise collaboration between factory automation and IT. The objective is to create new value centred on edge computing. The joint press conference to announce the establishment of the Edgecross Consortium was held on 6 November 2017, in Tokyo, and the establishment of the consortium is planned for 29 November 2017.

“Partnering with leading global companies in accelerating our global business in Industry 4.0 is Advantech’s key strategy,” stated Allan Yang, CTO of Advantech. “Advantech joined the Mitsubishi e-F@ctory Alliance this April to foster business opportunities for smart manufacturing in Asia through co-marketing and co-exhibition. Joining the Edgecross Consortium is our next big step to expand global collaboration and business in Industry 4.0. We are very proud to be a part of the Edgecross Consortium with these leading global companies; we are looking forward to collaborate with consortium members to develop Industry 4.0 products and solutions to enhance our customer experiences.”

Mitsubishi Electric Executive Officer and Group President of Factory Automation Systems Yoshikazu Miyata gave the following statement regarding the new partnership: “The consortium welcomes Advantech as a key member. We are happy to work with Advantech, a worldwide leading innovator for edge computing and IoT solutions. We are looking forward to co-creating with Advantech to provide innovative IoT solutions to customers.”

The Edgecross Consortium allows the easy realisation of FA and IT collaboration through its open software platform (Edgecross Software Platform), which is based on edge computing. By residing on the edge layer, the Edgecross Software Platform facilitates connectivity between factory shop floors and value chains, while enabling the rapid acquisition, analysis and utilisation of data, which are essential to smart manufacturing. In addition, user applications can be easily created and shared on the edge to realise various IoT utilisation purposes.

“Advantech has been a leader in providing IPCs and edge intelligence servers (EISs) as a key component for FA–IT collaboration. We plan to further collaborate with the Edgecross Consortium in order to provide WISE-PaaS software through the Edgecross Software Platform and to co-develop iFactory solution-ready platforms (SRPs) with consortium members,” Advantech Industrial IoT Group Associate Vice President Jonney Chang stated.

The consortium aims to co-develop the platform specifications for and achieve certification of Edgecross products, in addition to co-marketing promotion and global co-selling for consortium members.

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