Virtualize for Architecture Sustainability in Industrial Automation

The technique of virtualization and cloud computing to manage system functionality and resources regardless of their physical locations is changing the way businesses and users interact with IT resources. Although several commercially available virtualization solutions already exist in the market, both for server and embedded real-time based systems, the deployment of virtualization and cloud-based technologies into the industrial automation domain is new. In this paper, we will first present the emerging trends of industrial automation domain and identify the architectural sustainability challenges that follow. Based on these challenges, we will then analyze how virtualization technology can contribute to cope with them, as well as the additional opportunities that it brings to industrial automation domain. The contributions of this paper are (1) to communicate the main trends happening in industrial automation, (2) clarify the architecture sustainability challenges that the automation domain is facing, and (3) identify the potentials of further utilizing virtualization technology in the industry domain.