HighByte Blog
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Read company updates and our technology viewpoints here.
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Time to read: 6 minutes  Posted by Aron Semle Let’s talk about getting OPC data into Microsoft Azure. When you search this phrase in Google, 90% of results provide this use case: streaming sensor data to the Cloud.
If your Industry 4.0 solution is streaming sensor data to the Cloud, you're doing it wrong. Now let me explain. On the factory floor, we have machines driven by PLCs, and we typically have an OPC server connected to those PLCs that feeds data into an HMI. OPC servers and HMIs work with tags, which are discrete streams of data. For example, one tag might be for pressure and another might represent the on and off state of the machine. When cloud technology like Microsoft Azure first entered the scene, vendors created IoT gateways to connect to the OPC server and send tag streams to the Cloud in a JSON format. It was the easiest thing to do, and once that connection was made, we thought we were done. Time to read: 4 minutes  Posted by Aron Semle The future of Industry 4.0 is open: open standards, open platforms, and open thinking. In today’s ecosystem, realizing the full potential of Industry 4.0 requires a mesh of products working together to fulfill each layer of the technology stack. Open standards and platforms simplify these integrations and speed up the time-to-value for Industry 4.0 solutions.
That is why I am excited to announce the release of HighByte Intelligence Hub version 1.2, enabling our customers to deploy their Industry 4.0 solutions even faster by leveraging additional open standards and platforms. Time to read: 4 Minutes  Posted by Tony Paine Communication within a start-up is pretty straightforward. If you have a question about a new product launch, you go directly to the owner or CEO. Problems with a design flaw? Talk to your lead engineer. As that business scales, your lines of communication become more complex. You may need to send information through multiple channels to get an answer. Without an easy way to send or retrieve information, it might get lost or misinterpreted or you may wait days for an answer. Anyone who has worked in that environment knows the inherent challenges.
Time to read: 4 minutes  Posted by Omar Ahmed Bill is leaving Acme Manufacturing Corporation. And when Bill leaves, he will take with him a tremendous amount of the tribal knowledge that he accumulated over the last 10 years at Acme. Bill has spent the last decade building out all of the industrial data systems and all of the individual connections between these disparate systems. Bill is the only person in the entire facility who has knowledge of the custom connections and interdependencies between OT and IT systems. With Bill leaving, the team at Acme is challenged with picking up the pieces and trying to gather up all of Bill’s tribal knowledge in order to maintain connectivity and prevent system downtime. The OT and IT teams must go deep into the custom code to try to understand and replicate what Bill has done. This is a challenging and cumbersome task, especially when troubleshooting broken integrations.
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