Faultless Edge: Stratus Powers India’s Industry 4.0

As India accelerates towards Industry 4.0, the demand for robust and reliable computing solutions has surged. Edge computing is expected to reach $4 billion in the Indian market by 2025, driven by industries such as oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing. Stratus Technologies, a leader in fault-tolerant computing, is at the forefront of this transformation, ensuring continuous operation and efficiency in remote and critical environments.

In a candid conversation with Minu Sirsalewala, Executive Editor of Dataquest, Stratus Technologies’ leadership team Lin Hoe Foong, Managing Director, Asia South, Stratus Technologies, Monish More, Sales Director, India, Stratus Technologies, and Sreedhar Varma, Director - India Operations, Stratus Technologies shed light on their strategic initiatives and advanced technological offerings aimed at revolutionizing industries in India. The discussion centered around the launch of their latest platform, ztC Endurance, and how Stratus is leveraging Edge Computing to facilitate digital transformation in the context of Industry 4.0 & delivering availability up to 99.99999% to ensure continuous operations.

How is Stratus leveraging Edge Computing to support the digital transformation of industries in India, particularly in the context of Industry 4.0?

Stratus has firmly established itself as a key player in both Edge Computing and Enterprise IT. Over the past forty years, we have expanded our presence in India, engaging with various sectors including banking, financial services and insurance, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, tire manufacturing, metals, metro , rail & airports. Some of these industries often operate in remote locations, far from their main offices, making Edge Computing crucial for their digital transformation.

Our products are designed to be simple, protected, and autonomous. They are easy to deploy and manage, delivering up to 99.99999% availability and featuring predictive and self-healing capabilities. This ensures continuous operation and supports the increased automation seen in Industry 4.0. By virtualizing and consolidating workloads, we help industries transition from standalone physical systems to more integrated and virtualized environments, ensuring reliability and efficiency even in remote locations.

Can you elaborate on the predictive fault tolerance capabilities of this new platform, and how it differentiates from your previous generations of fault tolerance systems?

Our new platform leverages advanced features in modern processors, memory, and other hardware components, building on 40 years of fault-tolerant computing experience. By analyzing extensive metrics and patterns, we can anticipate potential hardware failures. Our architecture includes dual modular components for the processor, I/O, storage and power supply; operating in mix of active/active and active/proactive mode. When a potential failure is detected, we perform a “smart exchange,” transferring workloads to the proactive standby node seamlessly. This ensures continuous operation and contributes to our seven nines (99.99999%) availability.

The Automated Uptime Layer (AUL) enhances this by providing real-time predictive features, ensuring that even in the event of hardware faults, the system self-heals by replacing faulty components autonomously. This approach significantly differentiates our platform from other platforms in the market.

How is this platform contributing to sustainable operations for enterprises?

Our ztC Endurance platform is designed with sustainability in mind. It consumes approximately 40-45% less power than regular servers and emits 48-49% less thermal load. The compact design reduces rack space requirements, further optimizing the footprint needed when ztC Endurance is deployed.

We achieve fault tolerance with reduced power consumption by using smart exchange technology, which ensures that only one node is actively consuming power at any given time unless a fault is detected. This makes our new product more efficient and sustainable, aligning with the growing emphasis on green operations.

What are the emerging trends in computing and fault tolerance systems that Stratus is focusing on for future development?

As automation and consolidation progress in edge environments, the need for reliable computing grows. We see a robust demand for IT-OT integration, especially in operational technology (OT) environments. Our simple to deploy, easy to manage products, like ztC Endurance, offer significant benefits to OT environment with limited IT resources and can cater to hybrid cloud environments, supporting both on-prem and cloud-based computing.

ztC Endurance is equip with AVX processing capability – a feature ideal for entry-level on-prem AI workloads.

We are also focusing on developing GPU processing capabilities for increasing AI analytic algorithm, enhancing our support for edge and core computing solutions that manage the majority of data locally before sending it to the cloud. This is particularly important for industries with limited IT infrastructure at remote sites.

How does Stratus address the challenge of managing unstructured data at the edge, especially with the increasing volume facilitated by AI?

Stratus has a longstanding collaboration with major OT and OEM players. As these partners integrate AI into their operations, we support them by ensuring reliable and seamless data connectivity from sensors to SCADA and MES systems. Our virtualized platform, ztC Endurance, is capable of running on various hypervisors, making it well-suited for environments with increasing workloads and unstructured data on-prem.

Could you provide insights into the current trends in the Indian market, particularly in terms of sector-wise traction and growth?

In India, we have seen significant traction across various sectors, including space research, metals, pharmaceuticals, transportation, and government. For example, in metals, we support digital transformations by ensuring the reliability of critical applications like MES and ERP integration. In the pharmaceutical sector, our solutions help consolidate data from multiple vendors, ensuring regulatory compliance.

Our presence in transportation, particularly in metro and railway systems, highlights our role in ensuring the smooth operation of mission-critical applications. We are also active in oil and gas, providing reliable solutions for refinery operations and terminal automation in remote locations.

Moreover on the BFSI side, today’s retail banking, corporate banking and capital markets customers expect immediate, uninterrupted access whether on site, online, or through a mobile app. Delivering a smooth, consistent, and valued experience anywhere, anytime can be data and infrastructure intensive, but can nonetheless be achieved with our fault tolerant solutions like ztC Endurance complementing the high availability computing platforms within their data centers with availability level of 99.99999%.

Any customer feedback from the Indian market that has influenced the development of the ztC Endurance platform?

Customer feedback has been instrumental in shaping our ztC Endurance platform. We ensure our platforms remain competitive by incorporating the latest technology, processors and memories; offering three variants tailored to diverse applications. We support multiple operating systems and provide flexibility through bare metal and hypervisor virtualization options. Our collaboration with partners and distributors ensures that we meet specific industry needs and maintain production continuity, which is crucial in markets like India with high transaction volumes.

What are the future growth plans for Stratus in India?

With the push for manufacturing and “Make in India,” we see significant OT growth. Our ztC Endurance product will be a game changer, offering a choice of advanced technology chipsets that benefit many clients in India. We aim to simplify availability and ensure operational continuity, be it for OT or IT applications. We already have successful implementations globally and are confident in replicating this success in India across various sectors.

Stratus Technologies is committed to driving digital transformation and sustainability through advanced Edge Computing solutions. As industries in India continue to evolve and embrace Industry 4.0, Stratus stands ready to support them with reliable, efficient, and sustainable computing platforms.

Fault tolerant computing solutions for BFSI and Enterprise IT sectors are other industries that Stratus would continue to grow in the India market. 

Lin Hoe Foong

Managing Director, Asia South, Stratus Technologies

Monish More

Sales Director, India, Stratus Technologies

Sreedhar Varma

Director - India Operations, Stratus Technologies

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