Enabling Industrial IoT as a Service with Multi-Access Edge Computing

Industrial IoT coupled with emerging cloud computing architectures shows high potential in transforming the way industrial processes are managed and carried out. This potential can be further enhanced by enabling on-demand deployment of IoT services located very close to the factory premises. This article proposes an architecture, based on the ETSI multi-access edge computing (MEC) framework, for the automated deployment of Industrial IoT applications “as a service,” taking advantage of proximity computing platforms such as edge and fog environments. A proof-of-concept implementation is reported to demonstrate that transforming Industrial IoT applications into MEC-based services running over multiple technological domains is not only feasible, but can achieve full service deployment in a matter of a few seconds.