Variant 8:
Edge Gateway running a soft PLC (Replacing traditional PLCs)

The variants discussed so far assume that an industrial automation
controller (for example PLC) controls industrial machines and
factory equipment. With the demands of Industry 4.0, these
proprietary industrial controllers have many limitations such as
limited memory and CPU capacity, no support for higher level
programming languages, no support for TLS, limited capacity to
support IIoT protocols like MQTT, no support for code deployments,
etc. In this variant, it is possible to run a software PLC (for
example Codesys) on the edge gateway. The edge gateway is
connected to downstream industrial systems and input/output PLC
modules. In this variant, customers can replace their legacy PLC
systems (for example from companies like Rockwell, SIEMENS,
Schneider) with a software PLC like Codesys which runs on
traditional industrial PC/ edge gateway.

Edge gateway with soft PLC