Author: James Butcher, IOTech Product Manager & EdgeX Foundry Chairman
Industry-Ready, Secure, and Fully Open-Source
The wait is over! We are excited to announce that the EdgeX 4.0 "Odesa" release is now available. This latest milestone brings key enhancements for industrial edge deployments and underscores our unwavering commitment to open-source principles. With important new features and strategic updates, EdgeX 4.0 is stronger, more reliable, and fully aligned with its mission of being a truly open and vendor-neutral edge computing platform.
What is EdgeX Foundry?
EdgeX Foundry is the leading open-source framework for edge computing, enabling seamless integration between IoT devices, sensors, and applications. Built on a microservices-based architecture, it empowers developers to create scalable and adaptable solutions while avoiding vendor lock-in. With millions of downloads and widespread adoption across industries like manufacturing, energy, building automation, and transportation, EdgeX is a cornerstone of modern industrial IoT edge systems.
Reinforcing Open-Source Integrity
EdgeX Foundry operates under the Apache 2.0 license, a permissive and widely accepted standard in the open-source community. As part of this release, we have replaced components that moved away from Apache 2.0-compatible licensing. This ensures that EdgeX remains an open, transparent, and trusted platform. Developers and businesses can continue building on EdgeX with full confidence in its licensing integrity.
Key Upgrades in EdgeX 4.0
As a microservices framework, EdgeX relies on third-party services for key functions such as data persistence, messaging, service configuration, and secret storage. In EdgeX 4.0, we have made several strategic component replacements:
- PostgreSQL: Now the primary internal database of EdgeX, PostgreSQL offers enhanced robustness, scalability, and other key features such as backup, redundancy, and recovery.
- OpenBao: The new Linux Foundation hosted sister project of EdgeX becomes the secret store implementation used by the framework.
- MQTT: Becomes as the default internal message bus that optimizes data communication between EdgeX services.
Importantly, EdgeX 4 maintains the same external services APIs from version 3, ensuring a smooth transition for users upgrading to this new version.
New Industrial-Grade Features
Beyond licensing changes to the above third-party components, EdgeX 4.0 introduces powerful new features to enhance its industrial readiness:
- Time-Based Scheduling: A major improvement for industrial edge systems, providing precise time-based execution of edge operations, replacing the previous interval-based approach.
- End-to-End Authentication: Implementing Zero-Trust Networking principles with the help of the OpenZiti open-source community to deliver the first full authentication mechanism for EdgeX services.
- New Python API: Expanding accessibility, EdgeX now supports a dedicated Python App Services API, opening the door for a wider community of developers and new edge AI use cases.
Get Started with EdgeX 4.0 Today!
With EdgeX 4.0 "Odesa," we reaffirm our commitment to security, interoperability, and open-source excellence. This release ensures that businesses relying on EdgeX for their industrial IoT and edge computing needs can do so with confidence.
EdgeX 4.0 is available now! Checkout the EdgeX Foundry website or the Odesa release page, for all of the details.
We look forward to seeing what you build with EdgeX 4.0!