INTRODUCTION

The industrial edge needs intelligence for many Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) projects to produce successful and useful results, both technically and financially. To make the edge “intelligent,” end users must understand what constitutes the real edge close to or even at the data sources, what both the edge and the cloud can and cannot accomplish, the key challenges in creating an intelligent industrial edge, and the significant technical and, most importantly, economic benefits this transformation will deliver. An intelligent edge can fill in the gaps to follow through on problem identification, time-to-resolution, and access for new pathways to success. In the IIoT, it all starts with the business case, and this paper provides several examples of successful business cases.