Control-as-a-service from the cloud: A case study for using virtualized PLCs

Cloud computing has recently emerged as a new computing paradigm in many application areas comprising office and enterprise systems. It offers various solutions to provide a dynamic and flexible infrastructure to host computing resources and deliver them as a service on-demand. Since industrial automation systems of the future have to be adaptable and agile, cloud computing can be considered as a promising solution for this area. However, the requirements of industrial automation systems differ significantly from the office and enterprise world. In this paper we describe a case study that implements a concept of PLC as a service within a cloud based infrastructure and provides a performance evaluation with respect to legacy PLCs.