Minimizing downtime has been a priorities for the
manufacturing industry, and indeed for all industries, for some time now.
However, recent technological changes and the emergence of the rapidly evolving
Internet of Things (IoT) have turned prevention of downtime from a goal to a critical
business need. The trend of movings from a thick client to a thin client is a
great example of how technological innovation has placed downtime prevention in
the important column. Instead of the traditional (thick) client / server
configuration, many companies have moved to a (thin) centralized computing
architecture.
For a production organization, installing a thin client can
mean that handheld devices can now push inventory data directly to a central
repository. Previously, data could be entered manually or by loading after the
inventory was completed. Beyond efficiency, this narrow architecture generates
real-time data that enables a company to make production and materials
decisions as inventory takes place.
Many manufacturing organizations have inadvertently created
a scrappy system architecture to keep up with the requirements for things like
thin client configuration. These tiered systems can be difficult to maintain,
upgrade, and troubleshoot. John Fryer, senior director of product management at
Stratus Technologies, shares that he often sees organizations with "three,
four, and sometimes five server implementations that provide redundancy."
Manufacturers using legacy multilayer systems can lag far
behind if they don't upgrade to keep up with the fast-paced Internet of Things.
Gartner predict that by 2020 the number of IoT devices will reach a staggering
50 billion. The need to maintain a zero-downtime system will continue to grow
as the existing network of physical devices grows.
To keep up with new trends and prepare for the IoT boom,
many organizations are moving to fault-tolerant servers. Fryer calls this type
of server a "failure prevention mechanism" because even if a problem
occurs, business-critical applications will not fail.
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