ABB and Red Hat recently announced a global partnership to enable industries using ABB’s process automation and industrial software to scale rapidly and flexibly leveraging Red Hat’s industry enterprise platforms and application services built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
The collection, management, and analysis of industrial plant data are critical to improve the efficiency of operations while addressing safety, security and productivity needs. This is inline with ABB’s strategy for the evolution of process automation to better user experience.
What does the partnership mean for both companies?
The partnership with ABB enables virtualisation and containerisation of automation software with Red Hat OpenShift to provide advanced flexibility in hardware deployment, optimised according to application needs. It also provides efficient system orchestration, enabling real-time, data-based decision making at the edge and further processing in the cloud.
Red Hat OpenShift and enterprise Kubernetes platform, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux as its foundation, provides ABB with a single consistent application platform, from small single node systems to scaled-out hyper converged clusters at the industrial edge, which simplifies development and management efforts for ABB’s customers for a better user experience.
Red Hat OpenShift increases the deployment flexibility and scalability of ABB Ability Edgenius together with ABB Ability Genix Industrial Analytics and AI Suite, an applications suite that leverages industrial AI to drive Industry 4.0 digital business outcomes for customers.
ABB’s Edgenius and Genix can both be scaled seamlessly and securely across multiple deployments. With this partnership, ABB will have access to capabilities like zero-touch provisioning which can increase manageability and consistency across plant environments.
What where the executives’ thoughts on the partnership?
Matt Hicks said, “Red Hat is excited to work with ABB to bring operational and IT closer together to form the industrial edge. Together, we intend to streamline the transition from automated to autonomous operations and address manufacturing needs using open source tech. As we work to break down barriers between IT and the plant level, we look to drive innovation and mark a paradigm shift in operational tech based open source.”
Bernhard Eschermann, Chief Technology Officer at ABB said,“This exciting partnership with Red Hat shows ABB’s commitment to customer needs by seeking alliances with other innovators.”
“The alliance with Red Hat will see ABB helping customers improve their operations as they navigate an evolving digital landscape. It will give them access to the tools they need to integrate plantwide IT and OT, while reducing risks and optimising performance.” he added.
