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Google Cloud, FogHorn partner to boost the Industrial Internet of Things

The companies are working together to create IIoT solutions for the cloud.
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer

FogHorn Systems and Google Cloud have announced a partnership to develop solutions for Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

On Tuesday, industrial edge computing solutions provider FogHorn said that the collaboration with Google Cloud IoT Core is aimed at "simplifying the deployment and maximizing the business impact of IIoT applications."

FogHorn's Lighting Edge Intelligence platform, an analytics and machine learning system, will be integrated with Google's Cloud IoT Core with industrial IoT and the IIoT market specifically in mind.

Google's Cloud IoT Core, which has recently been made generally available, is an IoT sensor service for managing IoT devices, connecting them, and ingesting IoT-based information.

"Cloud IoT Core simply and securely brings the power of Google Cloud's world-class data infrastructure capabilities to the IIoT market," said Antony Passemard, Head of IoT Product Management at Google Cloud. "By combining industry-leading edge intelligence from FogHorn, we've created a fully-integrated edge and cloud solution that maximizes the insights gained from every IoT device. We think it's a very powerful combination at exactly the right time."

Information captured by Cloud IoT Core through IoT devices can be published to Cloud Pub/Sub for analytics purposes, while Google BigQuery, the Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine, and Google Data Studio can be utilized for industrial players to make sense of the data they collect.

Industrial IoT has a range of applications and is considered a key cornerstone of Industry 4.0. Sensors, whether on the factory floor or at the edge of networks, are able to collect information which can be used in predictive maintenance, real-time operations monitoring, and as part of Big Data analysis in order to streamline industrial processes and business operations.

By bringing FogHorn to the mix, the data collected can now be spread to the edge of IoT networks, improving visibility into the factory floor, supply chains, and industrial operations.

This information can also be used for machine learning systems and machine-to-machine communications.

Edge analytics can improve data gathering and analysis at the points of collection, which can also improve latency and network efficiency.

See also: What is the IoT? Everything you need to know about the Internet of Things right now

The companies say that the combination will especially be of use to industrial players in the manufacturing, oil, gas, mining, and energy industries, among others.

"Our integration with Google Cloud harmonizes the workload and creates new efficiencies from the edge to the cloud across a range of dimensions," said David King, CEO at FogHorn. "This approach simplifies the rollout of innovative, outcome-based IIoT initiatives to improve organizations' competitive edge globally, and we are thrilled to bring this collaboration to market with Google Cloud."

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