Margo is an open standard initiative for interoperable orchestration at the edge of industrial automation ecosystems. With the backing from giants ABB/B&R, Capgemini, Microsoft, Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric, and Siemens as founding members, Margo is designed to streamline the integration of applications and devices across multi-vendor environments, simplifying digital transformations for organizations of all sizes. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Margo Chair Bart Nieuwborg to learn more about the initiative.
Bart Nieuwborg’s Background
What is Bart Nieuwborg’s background? Nieuwborg said:
“I have over 25 years of experience working with Rockwell Automation across various roles in the company, ranging from field service engineer over customer training & project delivery to marketing & business management. I currently serve as a program manager in the Open Architecture group, focusing on collaboration around Edge & Cloud standards for the industry. I’m based in France.”
Formation Of Margo
How did the idea for Margo come together? Nieuwborg shared:
“The industry has experienced a lack of interoperable orchestration at the edge in the industrial automation space, resulting in a significant hurdle for industrial manufacturers to digitalize their operations at scale. Through informal discussions between the founding members, a consensus was quickly formed to tackle this pain point together in a collaborative and open manner, alongside a few other common challenges. Subsequent iterations and discussions resulted in the Margo initiative.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the initiative so far? Nieuwborg reflected:
“The journey towards the public announcement was an intense but great experience. Working with enthusiastic peers from the Margo founding member companies motivated me even more to go the extra mile. Seeing it then, coming all together at the Hannover Messe (@Margoinitiative ) and experiencing an outstanding response from the audience across industries, confirmed we are on the right track to contribute to the huge digitalization challenge of the industrial automation market.”
Core Deliverables
What are the initiative’s core deliverables? Nieuwborg explained:
“The Margo initiative will deliver an open source reference implementation, an open standard, and the associated compliance test suite.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Nieuwborg and the team faced in building the company? Nieuwborg noted:
“While focusing on how we could orchestrate interoperability at the edge, we identified that one of the main challenges would be the need for broad acceptance of the proposed solution to become effective in the market. Margo decided on an open, transparent, and inclusive approach and hosted the initiative as an open-source and open-standard project under the Linux Foundation, welcoming anyone to join us on the journey. This choice has been well received, as we welcomed two new steering members within the first few weeks after our public announcement.”
Evolution Of The Initiative
How has the initiative’s technology evolved since launching? Nieuwborg noted:
“Margo is agile. It is typically focused on leveraging existing proven technology stacks, often coming from the IT world. Margo focuses on adapting these technologies as needed to the typical OT requirements, such as ease of use and longevity. Abstraction principles are followed to allow for the evolution in underlying technology stacks while maintaining the stability of the interoperability APIs.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Nieuwborg cited:
“The Margo public announcement was a great first milestone for us, as relevant suppliers in the industrial market made a strong statement to jointly solve this particular interoperability question, and encouraged anyone to join them on the journey in an inclusive manner. Keeping in mind Margo is only a month old, we know there is a lot in store for us as the community grows, and we jointly work towards addressing the pain points faced by the industry.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Nieuwborg about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Before making the public announcement, the concept, roadmap, and planned deliverables were shared with a select group of industrial manufacturing company representatives. The response was unanimous: ‘we are delighted that you are addressing a key pain point we are experiencing on a daily basis, and are even more delighted that you plan to do it in an open-source manner.’ This said, the Margo initiative wants to remain humble and focus now on delivering on that promise before declaring it a victory.”
Funding
When asking Nieuwborg about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“As this is an open-source project, it is non-profit. Our metrics are more based on how we increase the memberships, as it is an indication of future adoption in the market. In practical terms, we would want to double the members in 2024. Today, the Margo community has already reached that objective. We recently welcomed Emerson, Red Hat, Zededa, and Intel as new Steering members, as well as multiple contributing members.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the initiative from its competition? Nieuwborg affirmed:
“We do not consider there is competition. We have carefully analyzed the landscape of interoperability in the industrial automation market, and we are solely focused on the gaps we identified. We see the Margo initiative as complementary to other initiatives or foundations that are focusing on interoperability in the industrial automation space. The Margo Initiative intends to set up relationships with other initiatives, for example, OPC UA, so that the industrial manufacturers get a crystal clear understanding of how Margo fits in the bigger picture of interoperability at the Edge.”
Future Goals
What are some of the initiative’s future initiative goals? Nieuwborg pointed out:
“Margo is taking a code-first approach. Our short-term focus is to make experimental reference implementations available in the open-source repositories at GitHub . Subsequently, we intend to refine the current pre-draft version of the specification https://specification.margo.org/ based on the findings and experiences from the experiments.
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Nieuwborg concluded:
“I would encourage the readers to take a look at margo.org and invite them to contribute to the Margo initiative, helping shape the future of interoperable orchestration at the edge.”
