HighByte Blog

i3X: The Factory API Built for Modern Manufacturing | Blog | HighByte

aron.semle@highbyte.com (Aron Semle) — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:55:22 GMT

Manufacturers have spent years wrestling with fragmented, proprietary APIs and siloed operational data. This fragmentation slows innovation, complicates analytics, and raises the cost of digital transformation and modernization efforts. It also prevents factories from fully taking advantage of the data they already have, since it’s spread across disparate stacks.

To address this, CESMII - the Smart Manufacturing Institute tasked a working group of industry leaders with developing a new strongly typed, discoverable, and IT-friendly open standard for industrial data access. The result is the Industrial Information Interoperability eXchange (i3X) standard, an open specification for browsing, reading, writing, and subscribing to industrial data via a consistent, vendor-agnostic, web-native interface. The ultimate goal of i3X is to standardize how existing enterprise systems interact with plants in a more predictable way, not to replace standards like OPC UA, MQTT, or prior unified namespace (UNS) investments.

I’ve been privileged to be part of the i3X working group and have seen firsthand how a common API layer can reduce bespoke integrations without forcing a wholesale architectural rework. The goal is simple: lower the barrier between OT and IT applications for manufacturers. i3X is the right standard to meet this goal at the right time, and it will simplify how IT systems access and make use of industrial data.

HighByte at Hannover Messe 2026 | Blog | HighByte

torey.penrod-cambra@highbyte.com (Torey Penrod-Cambra) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:24:42 GMT

Hannover Messe 2026 is approaching quickly, with the exhibit floor opening on 20 April in Hannover, Germany. As the world’s leading trade fair for the manufacturing industry, Hannover Messe hosts more than 4,000 exhibitors and 130,000 on-site attendees each year.

HighByte returns this year with a bigger footprint and our partner ecosystem at the center. The value of HighByte Intelligence Hub comes to life through our partnerships—from the consuming and target-system technology providers to the integrators helping our customers deploy these solutions and navigate change management. Together, this ecosystem is what enables manufacturers to build the data foundation required to support AI at scale.

Intelligence Hub Version 4.4 | Blog | HighByte

jeffrey.schroeder@highbyte.com (Jeffrey Schroeder) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:43:33 GMT

Industrial data has always been difficult to work with. Digitally integrating business processes, in the pursuit of productivity, may be making it more so. As organizations connect more systems in more directions, the demands placed on that data multiply with every integration.

The gap between what existing systems were built for and what organizations need today is real. Data distributed across areas, sites, and networks is difficult to contextualize and access as a unified whole. And as deployments expand and more teams get involved, the knowledge behind data pipelines needs to be more accessible, not just to the engineers who originally built them, but to the broader teams who work with and support them every day.

HighByte Intelligence Hub version 4.4 is built for exactly that environment. This release introduces Central Data for composing federated namespaces and pipelines with remote data sources, new connectivity options including native Databricks Zerobus support and the CESMII i3X Server interface, and a Pipeline AI Agent that makes pipeline configuration more accessible across teams and skill levels. Taken together, they extend what Industrial DataOps teams can do and who can do it.

The 100x Problem | Blog | HighByte

john.harrington@highbyte.com (John Harrington) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 13:57:32 GMT

During a recent conversation on the Industrial AI Podcast, I shared a way of thinking about data consumers that I believe is important for every manufacturing leader to understand.

Accelerating AI-Driven Energy Operations | Blog | HighByte

carolyn.baron@highbyte.com (Carolyn Baron) — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 14:06:45 GMT

Energy companies face pressure to secure critical infrastructure, improve operational resilience, and navigate volatile markets with real-time insights. At the same time, AI adoption across the energy sector is accelerating—placing new demands on data architectures that were never designed to support advanced analytics or machine learning at scale.

Modernizing GxP Compliance | Blog | HighByte

torey.penrod-cambra@highbyte.com (Torey Penrod-Cambra) — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:25:40 GMT

Life sciences manufacturers operate in environments where innovation and compliance must coexist. But how is that possible in practice, and what use cases are emerging across the industry?

Intelligence Hub Version 4.3 | Blog | HighByte

john.harrington@highbyte.com (John Harrington) — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:01:34 GMT

Industrial companies stand at a pivotal moment in their digital transformation journeys. AI promises to revolutionize how they leverage data and configure systems, but the path from proof-of-concept to practical application remains challenging. HighByte Intelligence Hub version 4.3 bridges this gap, delivering capabilities that help industrial enterprises become AI-ready while reinforcing the core functions required for reliable operations.

Address These 5 Challenges | Blog | HighByte

torey.penrod-cambra@highbyte.com (Torey Penrod-Cambra) — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 15:15:28 GMT

Maybe you’re tired of hearing about Industry 4.0, but we’re just now getting to the good part. Attitudes about Industry 4.0 use cases—and digital transformation as a whole—are largely optimistic among industrial companies. State of the Industry research conducted by IndustryWeek in the last two years tells us that:

Intelligence Hub Version 4.2 | Blog | HighByte

john.harrington@highbyte.com (John Harrington) — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 19:16:43 GMT

The latest release of HighByte Intelligence Hub delivers critical capabilities for enterprise-grade Industrial DataOps. Version 4.2 represents another important milestone in our mission to continuously improve industrial data integration, contextualization, standardization, and scalability.

In this release, you’ll find solutions for Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the factory floor, where DataOps supports AI and AI supports DataOps. This version also leverages DevOps tooling to manage Intelligence Hub deployments with the addition of Git and OpenTelemetry support. There are also new native connections with Databricks and TimescaleDB, as well as enhancements to many existing connections and functionalities. In this post, I’ll break down these key features and explain why they are so important for industrial data management.

Emerging Tech & Trends | Blog | HighByte

torey.penrod-cambra@highbyte.com (Torey Penrod-Cambra) — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 19:59:34 GMT

We’re halfway there.