Acquisition of Edge technology

Siemens is plan­ning the acqui­si­tion of Edge tech­nol­o­gy from the US com­pa­ny Pix­eom. With this action, Siemens is strength­en­ing its Indus­tri­al Edge port­fo­lio by adding soft­ware com­po­nents for Edge run­time and for device man­age­ment. Siemens Indus­tri­al Edge pro­vides an ecosys­tem, which enables the flex­i­ble pro­vi­sion and use of apps. This means for exam­ple that appro­pri­ate apps can ana­lyze data local­ly at the machine and send rel­e­vant data to the high­er-lev­el Indus­tri­al Edge Man­age­ment Sys­tem for glob­al ana­lyt­ics. With this acqui­si­tion, Siemens is dri­ving for­ward the expan­sion of its Dig­i­tal Enter­prise port­fo­lio and the inte­gra­tion of cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies for the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of industry.

With the result­ing Indus­tri­al Edge ecosys­tem, indus­tri­al com­pa­nies can use pro­duc­tion data even more effi­cient­ly and react more flex­i­bly to changes in con­di­tions. Ralf-Michael Franke, CEO of Busi­ness Unit Fac­to­ry Automa­tion, explains: “Cut­ting edge tech­nolo­gies such as Edge Com­put­ing open up new scope for automa­tion. With Siemens Indus­tri­al Edge, we are cre­at­ing an open edge ecosys­tem which offers ben­e­fits for com­pa­nies of any size.” Siemens is using Dock­er stan­dard con­tain­er tech­nol­o­gy: the pro­vi­sion of apps in the man­age­ment sys­tem will there­fore be just as sim­ple as func­tion­al upgrades and updates of Edge devices in the fac­to­ry from a cen­tral point.

Siemens intends to acquire this tech­nol­o­gy from Pix­eom and use it in the Busi­ness Unit Fac­to­ry Automa­tion, which is part of Siemens Dig­i­tal Indus­tries. Pix­eom has sites in San José, Cal­i­for­nia and Udaipur, India and employs 81 peo­ple world­wide. Clos­ing of the trans­ac­tion is planned for the fourth quar­ter of 2019. Both com­pa­nies have agreed not to com­ment on the finan­cial details of the transaction.