The community of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance is an informal association of members outside the legal framework of the Alliance in order to achieve certain - also commercial - goals. Members' projects are awarded the "Community" label if they conform to the Alliance's objectives and interests. The App Store, which Hilscher is developing on its own account, is now the first example of a community project. At the same time, the Alliance Marketplace Directory, a neutral directory accessible to all members that bundles the products and services of the members in one place, is being created within the Alliance.

Increasing demand for industrial apps

Hans-Jürgen Hilscher, CDO at Hilscher: "The first apps should be available from the store by the end of September.

© Hilscher GmbH

The Open Industry 4.0 Alliance Community App Store is now the first project to be approved by the Alliance. The idea behind the app store is that what works for mobile devices in the consumer sector is also a model for the industrial market. After all, different container applications from different manufacturers run on the edge and interact with each other.

"There are already stores from providers such as Phoenix-Contact, which are essentially filled with automation components from their own ecosystem. The OI4 Community App Store will soon provide members of the Alliance with a comprehensive sales platform for their apps without investment and maintenance costs," explains Hans-Jürgen Hilscher, Chairman Technical Committee of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance and CDO of Hilscher Gesellschaft für Systemautomation. "The focus will be on apps that run on the Alliance-compliant Open Edge Computing Platform. We have created a comprehensive guideline in the Alliance's technical workstream. It describes the Edge Computing Platform and how apps from different manufacturers can interact with each other via this platform."

The app store has now been presented at Hannover Messe 2021 and, from the end of the third quarter, members of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance will be able to obtain tested, Docker-compatible, hardware-independent industrial apps from it. Docker is one of the market-leading technologies for running apps in clouds. A marketplace directory is currently being set up on the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance website, which lists products and services from Alliance members and links to them. End users will benefit from increased transparency as a result.

The container technology Docker

Container technology provides applications as an encapsulated environment. A container contains all dependencies, libraries and static data required to run the application. However, the complete provision of an operating system is dispensed with; this is ensured by a container host, which the user installs in their production environment. Docker container technology is widely used for Linux and Windows. The industrial apps of the members of the alliance should be able to be installed on Docker-compatible controllers and edge gateways.