Let’s get down to brass tacks. Which critical industrial workloads should stay on site at the enterprise edge, and which should go to far-off cloud data centres? That is the question. What rules should critical-grade industries and industrial-grade service providers follow? None, retorts almost everyone (see interviews, pages 8ff). That is the challenge with Industry 4.0; nothing is easy with the design and implementation of new-fangled digital-change infrastructure for critical industry. Almost everything is bespoke – and the solution invariably takes on a life of its own when it gets to sign-off.
