Create vision.md

Co-authored-by: Marcel Müller <m.mueller@ifm.com>
Co-authored-by: Matthias Beyer <matthias.beyer@ifm.com>
Reviewed-by: Marcel Müller <m.mueller@ifm.com>
Reviewed-by: Matthias Betz <matthias.betz@ifm.com>
Reviewed-by: Matthias Beyer <matthias.beyer@ifm.com>
Signed-off-by: Matthias Beyer <matthias.beyer@ifm.com>

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+# What is our vision?
+
+The aim of creating thin-edge.io is to provide a IoT edge device framework for
+IoT project teams which makes it easy to enable resource constrained devices for
+IoT. Unlike other solutions, we are not just another single-purpose agent but a
+flexible platform with re-usable components without any vendor lock-in, focused
+on adressing the needs of both IT and OT users.
+
+## Our motivation
+
+We believe that IoT (edge/device management, middleware, data analytics) are the
+driving forces of the fourth industrial revolution: companies are forced to
+leverage IoT solutions to stay competitive. In the past a large amount of
+companies have suffered from failed IoT projects and initiatives, where a lot of
+time and money was spent on device enablement: connectivity, security, device
+management, etc...
+
+Thats why we are creating thin-edge.io. It provides an easy and flexible way for
+IoT project teams and device manufactures to make their devices IoT-ready
+without having to re-invent the wheel with costly and time-consuming,
+potentially embedded, development projects.
+
+## Our target segments
+
+**B2B (IoT) Service providers:**  IoT services providers are companies that are
+building and offering products and services based on IoT technology. For them it
+is crucial to deliver business outcomes and return on investment fast, as they
+are dealing with a lot of end-customers who themselves in the past often failed
+"homegrown" IoT initiatives. There is no willingness from the end customer to
+spend a large amount of money and time on device connectivity. Therefore
+thin-edge.io for them is a critical foundation to solve the connectivity
+challenge and to focus on the business applications rather then connectivity and
+device management aspects, which are in a lot of cases considered "hygiene
+factors".
+
+**(Smart) Equipment makers/Hardware manufacturers/OEMs:** Equipment
+Manufacturers are moving away from focusing primarily on selling their equipment
+towards selling their equipment as a service (EaaS). An IIoT platform allowing
+to connect and manage assets as well as to use the visualize, analyze, and
+integrate equipment data is often the foundation to enable service-based
+business models and services. Here thin-edge.io is used as a foundation to bring
+"intelligence" around the equipment. Combined with any IoT platform, single
+purpose gateways or devices which sit on the equipment can be transformed into
+edge deployment options for services and applications that support the overall
+EaaS business model by leveraging thin-egdge.io framework.
+
+**Smart equipment operators:** Rather than dealing with single equipment, smart
+operators are looking to enhance or optimize whole manufacturing processes with
+the help of IIoT. Operating complex manufacturing systems requires not only to
+handle various industry protocols and assets but also requires to connect and
+manage a heterogeneous set of industrial devices and hardware such as PLCs,
+protocol converters or industrial gateways. Here thin-edge.io helps to unify the
+complex device landscape by offering lightweight software modules which can run
+on resource constrained, brownfield hardware.
+
+## Our target users/personas
+
+Within the different target segments, we are addressing the following personas
+with thin-edge.io:
+
+**(IoT) Solution Developer/ Solution Architect**: Background consisting of
+Python, Java, JS, Angular, Kubernetes, Cloud Platforms
+- Responsible for :
+    - Implementing and maintaining the end-to-end IoT solution
+    - Often juggling multiple initiatives covering a broad range of technology
+      stacks in addition to implement and maintaining solutions.
+- Challenges and needs regarding device enablement:
+    - Lack of expertise and knowledge in embedded space
+    - Dealing with fragmented hardware / linux variants
+    - Lack of time to focus on device enablement as building IoT applications on
+      cloud side is main responsibility
+    - No interest/time to dive into "hygiene factors" as device management and
+      security
+    - Expect ready to use or configuration based solution, with pre-defined
+      design principles and framework, offering easy extensibility with known
+      tools/languages
+
+**Device developer / Embedded engineer**: background consisting of Linux, C/C++,
+C#, embedded systems (IT focused)
+
+- Responsible for
+    - device logic including firmware and software
+    - primarily only tasked to connect one or many devices/types to overall IoT
+      solution
+- Challenges and needs reagarding device enablement:
+    - enable new services and connectivity on the device while keeping stability
+      and robustness (while having limited computing resources)
+    - dealing with certificates, queuing and persisting messages to handle
+      unstable connections
+    - allowing the device to be managed centrally, to keep it secure and
+      up-to-date (while important to him not always #1 prio to overall
+      initiative/project)
+
+- Special case : embedded dev with OT focus
+    - familiar with PLCs, SCADA systems,
+    - dealing with emerging need for connectivtiy and IIoT
+    - key concern is security, robusteness and resource efficiency which is
+      usually overruling any "typical" IT solution on the device and implies
+      some kind of custom logic. (e.g. rather closed OS, no dependencies can be
+      installed, very strict certification and QA process , no CI/CD possible,
+      long prodcut lifecycle 10-20 years)
+
+**Summary:** The persona types adressed by thin-edge.io often have conflicting
+requirements and views, this itself is addressed by the project technology
+vision and design principles, allowing thin-edge.io acting as a bridge between
+the OT and IT world.
+
+## Persona needs and solutions
+
+**Key problems for users:** Until now, when developing device software, IoT
+project teams and device builders were spending a lot of time solving generic
+challenges such as connecting to a cloud or IoT, dealing with certificates,
+queuing and persisting messages to handle unstable connections or allowing the
+device to be managed centrally, to keep it secure and up-to-date.
+
+To overcome these challenges today, customers can either implement all those
+components themselves, which typical results in complex embedded as well as
+individual, device-specific code which needs to be maintained over the complete
+device lifecycle.
+
+Implementing these functionalities oneself has not only a very high complexity
+but also an opportunity cost, as those resources could have been used for more
+specific business needs. On top of that, companies wish to be more and more
+flexible so as to stay relevant in an ever-changing digital landscape.
+
+Of course, any generic solution would have to walk the very tight path of
+keeping a low resource footprint, strong security and robustness.
+
+The combination of those challenges often leads a series of custom developed
+embedded software that is expensive to maintain and extend. Also, most of the
+development used to be specific to one cloud or IoT platform. At the same time
+for more and more use-cases moving logic and analytics to the embedded edge
+device becomes a must for reasons such latency, security or cost. However,
+moving, and orchestrating workloads on the Edge used to be very challenging as
+it also requires a lot of custom logic to be developed on the device, to be able
+to integrate and support various device management platforms.
+
+**Example applications scenarios:** Edge/embedded devices are critical
+components of any connected asset/smart equipment or operator use case. Within
+the different use-cases and application scenarios, the edge can take over
+different roles to address different IoT challenges:
+
+- Edge devices as a machine gateway:
+    - A typical problem for the target personas is the integration of various
+      asset specific OT interfaces to establish connection to fieldbus or
+      industry protocols.
+- Supporting IoT and other Northbound connectivity
+    - Vendor agnostic connectivtiy of the data plane and control plane,
+      analytics and service/app orchestration from various IoT platforms is
+      required for all future IoT use-cases, as hyperscaler platforms and
+      end-customer vendor preferences might vary.
+- Edge devices as deployment option for IoT services and applications
+    - There is an increasing need for device specific applications close to the
+      device e.g. device configuration, control logic, local monitoring, here a
+      flexible software management framework is needed which is independent from
+      the preferred software artifact type due to different hardware, OS
+      variants and package managers.
+- There is an emerging need for Edge analytics such as data filtering,
+  pre-aggregation, ML model execution.
+- Edge devices as configuration/management interface for asset - local/remote UI
+  for asset configuration/management including software and firmware management
+  of underlying systems to keep them secure and up-to date
+
+## thin-edge.io as a game changer
+
+To address the problems above, we create thin-edge.io as a framework for
+lightweight IoT gateways, PLC’s, routers and other embedded devices which
+require integration and interoperability with IoT platforms.
+
+The framework includes modules for cloud connectivity, data mapping, device
+management, intra-edge communication, and certificate management, all aspects
+and challenges our target personas need to address.
+
+In combination with IoT platforms, thin-edge.io is a foundation for enabling
+devices with the following capabilities:
+
+- support for effortless and secure edge device lifecycle management for single
+  and device fleets
+- support for low-touch provisioning of thin edge devices
+- support for local and remote configuration
+- support for local and remote maintenance including remote access
+  (monitoring/troubleshooting),
+- decommissioning of thin devices (e.g. for security compromised or end of life
+  devices). Based on the challenge to capture both, the OT and IT persona needs,
+  thin-edge.io is focused on following design principles:
+
+- providing ready-to-use components available on wide-range of hardware and
+  embedded linux variants (thin edge layer)
+- allowing control and orchestration from IoT (device management)  platforms
+- effortless and secure edge software management for different software artifact
+  types
+- support effortless and secure edge analytics execution/management for
+  different analytics artifact types and runtimes
+
+**Why are we uniquely positioned to be competitive?**
+
+thin-edge.io offers a unique approach to unify the needs of both the IT and OT
+world by offering a platform design focused on efficiency robustness and
+security while offering the highest level of extensibility and wide range of
+hardware.
+
+- Compared to other frameworks we are not restricting users towards one specific
+  software artifact type, package manager, programming language or message
+  payload to be used on the device
+- We combine robust and lightweight components with extensibility (plug-in
+  mechanisms, mapper concept for cloud/platform support)
+- We offer out-of-the-box modules to be used in combination with device
+  management platforms
+- We offer hardware and infrastructure agnostic deployment of all edge
+  capabilities
+
+## Additional Questions
+
+What business goals do we try to achieve ?
+- This is an open source project licenced under Apache 2.0, it is focused on
+  enterprise and company (B2B) use, hence why we encourage further partners to
+  join our mission and community to create an industry standard for IoT device
+  enablement and vendor agnostic connectivity and device management.
+