Dell will expand its Building Internet of Things offerings with the launch later this year of its first purpose-built industrial PC products, the Embedded Box PC 3000 Series and 5000 Series. Available this summer, the products are fanless, ruggedized and built to provide customers fast time to market, according to the company.

Aaron Shaw, product marketing manager for embedded PCs at Dell, described the embedded PC, also known as an industrial PC, as an “edge computing type device.” An embedded box PC is a “ruggedized,” fanless PC that is built into or onto other pieces of equipment. It is “a PC that runs in a harsher environment,” said Shaw. An embedded PC typically has a Windows operating system (Ubuntu will also be available with the new Dell lines) and the ability to connect to a full graphical user interface and multiple displays. Because it has no fan, it is well suited for applications where noise is a concern. What’s more, the fan is the often most common component failure in embedded use cases, according to Dell.

The Dell Embedded Box PCs can be used “headless” or with keyboard, mouse and monitor. The have extensive wired and wireless input/output (I/O) options and are optimized for wall, DIN-rail and VESA mounting.

Although the term may be unfamiliar to FMs, the embedded PC market isn’t new. Dell says research shows the market, currently at $11 billion, is growing at 15 percent a year, and is expected to top $23 billion by 2019, driven by falling component costs, improved power efficiencies, increasing business ROI needs and demand from the IoT. Dell is entering the market in part to serve customers who buy Dell products for other applications. Among the issues, according to Dell: long lead times, low device reliability, limited scalability, lack of security and manageability options and limited support.

“Customers have consistently told us that current embedded solutions do not meet the level of cost-effective sophistication, scale and support they need for these to be a critical, reliable component of their operations,” said Andy Rhodes, executive director, Commercial IoT Solutions, Dell. 

Shaw said that Dell’s embedded PCs also offer customers the benefits of working with Dell, including the ability to fill orders ranging from the small to the very large, global sourcing and service, customization, speed of response, security, product reliability, and IoT expertise.

Dell plans to launch its embedded box PC line this summer. Most units are expected to be sold to OEMs, but the product can also be purchased directly by customers. The 3000 Series is designed for space-constrained applications, such as retail kiosks, automated vending devices, and vehicles. The 5000 Series is optimized for performance and I/O scalability. It includes two PCI/PCIe card slots for adaptability. It provides high-bandwidth for industrial PC and IoT use cases (multi-HD video streaming apps and high frequency sensor data sources) as well as manufacturing and automation control.

Dell has already entered the building automation market with the Gateway 5000. A gateway is a “single personality device,” explained David Chang, product marketing manager for edge gateways at Dell. “We’re really designing a dedicated device that’s really optimized for building automation.”

One function of the gateway is to run analytics “at the edge,” rather than sending all the data to the cloud. In that sense, said Chang, a gateway can be called a “spam filter for the cloud.”