IOTech announces latest release of Edge XRT, its open edge software platform for time-critical IoT systems

EDINBURGH, Scotland - March 19, 2021 - PRLog -- Edinburgh, United Kingdom -- IOTech, the edge software company, has announced the general availability of Edge XRT v1.1, the latest release of its software platform designed for time-critical and resource-constrained applications at the IoT edge.

Edge XRT greatly simplifies the development of time-critical IoT systems at the edge and enables application portability, improved supportability and faster time-to-market for new IoT edge applications. Edge XRT runs on commodity hardware, independent of the silicon provider and operating system, and has complete deployment flexibility. It can be deployed as a native application, containerized and/or into a virtualized environment.

With its small memory footprint and efficient use of computing resources, Edge XRT is suitable for microcontroller-based IoT applications, including instrumentation and equipment monitoring, automobile engine management systems, medical devices, home automation and consumer electronics.

"The new release of Edge XRT adds important features that our users have been asking for," said Andrew Foster, Product Director at IOTech. "These capabilities support our goal of making it as simple as possible to create the next generation high performance connected applications at the Edge, helping to reducing time-to-market for our customer's projects".

The new release adds a number of important features including:

• OT connectivity: in addition to the existing support for Modbus, EtherNet/IP and EtherCAT protocols, new configurable connectors for BACnet and OPC UA have been added
• Cloud connectivity: "out-of-the-box" integration with AWS IoT Core, Google Cloud IoT Core and Microsoft Azure cloud endpoints
• Tooling: IOTech's Device Configuration Tool (DCT) can be used with Edge XRT to graphically model new OT endpoints for each supported protocol (e.g., Modbus) and then generate the configuration files needed to easily onboard each new device/sensor type. The same tool can also generate Digital Twins Definition Language (DTDL) files used to create a digital representation of the physical connected devices and through which Azure cloud-hosted applications can interact with the real devices
• Integrated support for Microsoft Azure Sphere devices to simplify the development of connected edge applications deployed on Azure Sphere MCUs

Edge XRT is designed for high-performance edge computing use cases such as industrial control and real-time signal processing applications across a variety of vertical markets. These include factory automation, oil and gas, utilities, smart energy, retail and hospitality. It also enables integration between the real-time edge applications and higher-level enterprise IT, SCADA and cloud applications.

For more information, visit Edge XRT or register for IOTech's upcoming webinar hosted jointly with Microsoft: Accelerating Time to Value for IoT Applications at the Far Edge. The webinar will focus on the business challenges that can be solved by combining the world's first time-critical edge software platform, Edge XRT with Microsoft Azure Sphere. The session will also include a demonstration of Edge XRT running on Azure Sphere devices and integrated into the wider Azure ecosystem.

About IOTech

IOTech builds and deploys vendor neutral software platforms and tools to support the rapid development, deployment and management of applications at the IoT Edge helping drive IoT innovation, global market adoption, velocity and scale. The company's products address the full spectrum of secure hard and soft real-time edge computing needs, dramatically reducing time-to-market, development and system integration costs for its partners who are the supply chains to multiple vertical IoT market domains. IOTech leverages an open source ecosystem to collaboratively improve time-to-market, develop global channel partnerships and achieve pervasive adoption of its software products.