Andrew Foster is Product Director at IOTech and has more than 20 years of experience developing IoT and other Distributed Real-time and Embedded (DRE) software products and services. He has held senior management positions in Product Delivery, Product Management and Product Marketing. Andrew has a proven track record of leading teams that have delivered many successful cutting edge open source and commercial technologies. Andrew frequently presents at conferences on subjects relating to distributed computing, middleware, embedded technologies and the IoT. For the last two years Andrew has chaired the EdgeX Foundry QA/Test Working Group. Andrew holds a M.S. in Computer-Based Plant and Process Control and a B.Eng. in Digital Systems Engineering.

Industrial IoT (IIoT) designs encompass a wide variety of communication standards to connect endpoints and applications. For IIoT to be successfully implemented across a broad range of industry applications, there must be a focus on bringing order to this complexity. The edge is where the most promise lies for this standardization. The ability to rapidly integrate and interoperate a wide mix of best-in-class ingredients is especially needed at the network edge where myriad devices must connect with applications. This presentation will discuss how middleware platforms based on open architecture principles have the potential to abstract much of this complexity and are vital to the successful deployment of IoT applications at the edge.