Cloud computing for industrial automation systems — A comprehensive overview

Cloud computing has recently emerged as a new computing paradigm in many application areas comprising office and enterprise systems. It offers various solutions to provide a dynamic and flexible infrastructure to host computing resources and deliver them as a service on-demand. Since industrial automation systems of the future have to be adaptable and agile, cloud computing can be considered as a promising solution for this area. However, the requirements of industrial automation systems differ significantly from the office and enterprise world. This paper provides an overview of the latest concepts of cloud computing technology for industrial automation. Existing works are categorized based on the levels of automation systems and research gaps are discussed based on these findings. A general cloud model for automation is derived from existing proposals by refining them further. This cloud model will offer automation functions as services from a dynamic infrastructure.