path: root/vision.md

# 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 and without having to reevaluate
existing projects or applications to enable them with thin-edge.io.

## 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.

- 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.