Industrial Internet Architecture Design

This assignment focuses on designing the architecture for General Electric's Industrial Internet, a big data and analytics system. It utilizes Enterprise Information Architecture Reference Architecture templates to create a business-centric system. The design process involves outlining capabilities, creating diagrams (Building Block, Architecture Overview, Logical), breaking down components into Operational Models, and describing geographically located nodes and their data connections. Throughout the design, emphasis is placed on the required big data and analytics capabilities for improving productivity and reliability.

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Architecture and System Integration

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Contents
Architecture and System Integration.....................................................................................................1
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Conceptual Architecture........................................................................................................................3
Logical Architecture...............................................................................................................................6
Component Model................................................................................................................................7
Component Descriptions.......................................................................................................................8
Name – Mashup Hub.........................................................................................................................8
Interfaces –........................................................................................................................................9
Component Interaction Diagram...........................................................................................................9
Operational Model..............................................................................................................................10
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................12
References...........................................................................................................................................13
Figure 1: Conceptual diagram................................................................................................................5
Figure 2: Architecture overview diagram..............................................................................................6
Figure 3: Logical Architecture Diagram..................................................................................................8
Figure 4: Component Relationship Diagram..........................................................................................9
Figure 5: Component Interaction Diagram..........................................................................................11
Figure 6: Operational Model................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
General Electric is a digital industrial company which was found in New Jersey USA in 1878.The
Company’s business is divided into four themes i.e. building, curing, moving and powering.
General electric builds appliances, lightning, power systems and many other products for domestic
and business applications. It also provides medical technologies like CT, MRI, Digital
Mammography, PET/CT, Ultrasound and patient monitoring devices. Apart from this, GE builds
navigational and transport safety and productivity systems.GE is also involved in developing and
producing nuclear and wind turbine technologies.
As, General Electric has a wide business and all of them are distributed so to provide connectivity
with all the themes it released a project named as “Industrial Internet”. This project is a combination
of machines, data and the Internet. This report will utilise an Enterprise Information Architecture-
Reference Architecture (EI RA) approach to analyse and design an Information Centric
implementation of Industrial Internet with respect to the four themes of General Electric.
EIA RA is a template approach to Enterprise Information Architecture. It not only works through a
systematic process of design but it assumes that there are tried and true methods and design patterns
which form the building blocks of information systems. Yet it allows for changing and evolving
technologies. The systematic EIA RA approach to Industrial Internet design will include its
Conceptual Architecture, Logical Architecture, Component Modelling and Operational Modelling.
One of GE’s latest projects is an “Industrial Internet” which is the convergence of industrial
machines, data and the Internet. The potential is to provide connectivity for all product applications
with the use of four themes. It also includes real-time monitoring and analytics of remote systems
such as pipelines and power generation equipment. This very dynamic company require enterprise
systems that can adapt and not only remain effective in the harshest of conditions but also operate in
the most secure and data sensitive environments such as hospitals.
Conceptual Architecture
The aim of Industrial Internet Enterprise System (EIS) is to provide a flexible, connected
information system that enables connectivity for all the product applications of General Electric .It
should also include real-time monitoring and analytics on remote systems and remain effective even
in adverse conditions. Capabilities required for the system should include:
 Industrial Internet must operate for all the four enterprises,

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 Provide real time monitoring on power generation equipment’s,
 Enable the sensors on gas turbines and other machines to get connected to the cloud,
 Enable the machines to operate in adverse situations
These four requirements of Industrial Internal is not an exhaustive list and only pertain to the four
themes of General Electric i.e. Building, Curing, Moving and Powering, the building blocks of
which are portrayed in Figure 1. This figure shows a system ‘as a single enterprise’ but comprises
all the four themes. A conceptual architecture diagram represents the system architecture and here it
describes how the executive business people gets the information updated on Industrial Internet.
Figure 1: Conceptual diagram
The real time monitoring all the themes is controlled by the cloud and then analysed in respect to
security. These building blocks are the basis of an Architecture Overview Diagram (AOD) which

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translates non-technical operational requirements into a conceptual model (Godinez, 2010) as
described in the given figure.
Figure 2: Architecture overview diagram
The AOD in the figure displayed below shows how the various concepts required in an Information
Architecture connect and interoperate to deliver a flexible Industrial Internet to the executive
business people.
Data Domains of all the themes comprises into a single enterprise approach of Industrial Internet
which is managed by Master Data services, Metadata Services, Data Services, Content Services and
Analytical Services. Although these systems will be geographically dispersed, they will be designed
to give accurate information and good performance to the cloud and all the four themes as well as
the end users.
Industrial internet provides functionalities of accessing big data. These systems and services are
used by the cloud as well as the executive business people with their respective presentation
services and delivery channels. The Connectivity and Interoperability service provides the data

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communication channels between all these systems and services. The service is integrated into
cloud services and security along with privacy.
The metadata services for exchange of information based systems on the basis of metadata. The
Master Data services provide quality and authoring services. The analytical services will let the
cloud optimize the business performance. The content services take care of the data which is
unstructured like images, presentations and gives measure to manage that data.
Logical Architecture
The logical architecture starts to set out the technical functionality required to deliver the business
view oriented conceptual architecture (Godinez, 2010). Figure 3 Logical View Diagram shows how
functional services are logically located in relation to each other. This starts at the base where Cloud
hosting services host and support Integration and Information services which provide services to the
Application Services which are presented to different themes and areas and constituents in the
Presentation Layer. These all communicate via the Connectivity and Interoperability Services.
Non-functional services dealing with Compliance, Availability, Retention, Security, Capacity and
Quality of Service (Godinez, 2010) are also shown in relation to the services they support. These
include Business Process Orchestration and collaboration service, Information Security and
Information Privacy and IT Service Compliance and Management Services.

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Figure 3: Logical Architecture Diagram
The Business Process Orchestration and Collaboration layer gives end-to-end business process
orchestration. They also provide abilities in such a way that all the users of an enterprise collaborate
easily.
The Connectivity and Interoperability determines interoperability between the services. It also
supports transport and communication protocol and interoperability functions.
Information Security and Information Privacy is required for security and data assurance policies.
These services are necessary because they reduce risk and make the system cost effective.
Component Model
The Component Model sets out the actual parts or components that will deliver the functionality
shown in the Logical model. A Component can be described as a logically grouped set of specific
capabilities or software applications that will deliver specific functionality (Godinez, 2010).
The model sets it out in three parts; Component Relationship Diagram, Component Descriptions
and Component Interaction Diagrams.
Component Relationship Diagram
The Component Relationship Diagram depicts the components, interfaces and their relationships
(Godinez, 2010). The given figure shows a depiction of the Logical Model Diagram turned on its

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side and populated with the Components which will deliver the logical functions. These
Components are then described as part of the Component Model.
Figure 4: Component Relationship Diagram
Component Descriptions
Component Descriptions describe each component in terms of it services, interfaces and functional
and non-functional requirements. Depending on the needs of the project these descriptions include
an ID for Identification, a Name, High-level description, Service description and a list of Interfaces
(Godinez, 2010). For the purpose of this report only the ‘Mash up Hub’ component differ from the
Enterprise Information Architecture Reference Architecture model and are therefore described.
Name – Mash up Hub
High-level description- This component combines the four themes of General Electric with
Industrial Internet .It also relates the cloud with the executive business people and works as an
interaction gateway between people and the Enterprise Information Enterprise. This portal will

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constitute all the four themes on a single cloud enabling the Industrial Internet to get mash-up with
the themes. In terms of security and moderation services, this Collaboration Hub relies on
Presentation Service’s access to the Directory / Security Services component for authentication and
authorisation and relies on collaboration services to monitor and moderate individual collaboration
instances. With the help of this hub, it will be easy to analyse and examine all the themes and let the
system operate easily.
This component relies on Presentation Services to secure the communication and authorise and
authenticate the constituent on a single-sign in basis (one sign in gives access to all authorised
portals).
Interfaces – on the external presentation side, multiple themes are presented simultaneously and are
presented to the executive business people. The presentation layer also presents multiple
collaboration interactions of executive business people on a dashboard type web or mobile app
page. On the internal interface side is a gateway which acts as a connection between building,
curing, moving and powering.
This Mash up hub also enables a business to quickly build web-based applications at low costs.
They also allow non-technical users to create new value from the information by mashing together
information from various sources.
Component Interaction Diagram
Component Interaction Diagrams depict the dynamic interaction between components in a
particular use case scenario. It is a way of high level interaction testing to verify component
configuration and inclusion.
The given figure represents the access to the Mash up- Hub interaction scenario. It shows how the
themes must be included in the cloud first and then be passed onto the Presentation Services for
examination.

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Figure 5: Component Interaction Diagram
Operational Model
An operating model is the operational design which is responsible for the delivery of the
business strategy. The ideas of operating model improvements make many changes in the
business strategy and hence the business grows. The operating models also describe how
the organization delivers the abilities and the outcomes of finance which are necessary for
the strategy.
 Processes and activities – the work that needs to be done
 Organization and people – the people doing the work and how they are organized
 Locations, buildings and other assets – the places where the work is done and the
equipment in those places needed to support the work
 Information – the software applications and databases needed to support the work
 Sourcing and partners – those outside the organization supporting the work
 Management system – the planning and performance management of the work

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Figure 6: Operational Model
The Operational Model takes the components from the Component Model and distributes them onto
geographically distributed nodes (Godinez, 2010). Data flow connections between nodes are
specified between geographically dispersed Locations. Nodes are location specific and physical
platforms on which software executes. Each node consists of one or more components known as
Deployment Units (Godinez, 2010). A Component Model will be broken down into many distinct
functional and non-functional Operational Models.
The EIA RA has templates for many standard components such as those portrayed in Figures 6 and
7. The ‘Content Resource Manager Service availability’ portrays an industry standard method of
maintaining high availability for unstructured data. Likewise the ‘Continuous Availability and
Resiliency Operational Pattern’ portrays a standard design to maintain the data security and
operations even in adverse situations.

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Conclusion
General Electric requires a big data and analytics system known as Industrial Internet. Hence,
Industrial Internet has been designed using industry standard Enterprise Information Architecture
Reference Architecture templates which are business executive centric. Having outlined five
specific capabilities, a system Building Block diagram and an Architecture Overview Diagram were
drawn to provide a conceptual technical view of the Industrial Internet enterprise information
system. From this diagram a Logical Diagram was drawn to translate the concepts into an
information system which was then broken down into components which could be described and
logic tested in the Component Model. Once all the components were set out they could be further
broken down into many Operational Models describing geographically located nodes and their data
connections. During each step of the design process, reference has been made to the required big
data and analytics capabilities for which the Enterprise Information System is designed. Industrial
Internet identifies ways to improve productivity and reliability.

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References
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