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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

Deploying wireless technologies in industrial automation becomes more and more common. It is an enabler for many innovative applications where moving system components are involved, e. g. rotating parts of machines. However, many of such applications impose high temporal requirements on the wireless system, for instance isochronous data communication. Today, these requirements can not be met by existing solutions, such as IEEE802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). In this paper, an isochronous wireless communication system is investigated. It mainly consists of a deterministic medium access control, based on IEEE 802.11, which is extended with additional features for isochronous communication. The presented preliminary analysis shows the system's feasibility for the targeted industrial applications and presents promising performance improvements in comparison with standard mechanisms