A cloud-based edge-as-a-service (EaaS) system allows edge gateways to be easily configured and deployed on the cloud for collection, contextualization, and egress of industrial data to downstream applications, including analytic applications, work order management systems, or visualization systems. The EaaS system uses predefined device profiles to automatically discover relevant data items on plant floor devices and present these data items to a user. Model configuration interfaces served by the EaaS system allow the user to map selected data items to predefined models for organizing or contextualizing the selected data, and for egressing the contextualized data to the target applications. These model configurations can be deployed on the cloud platform as edge gateways that use the resulting information models to collect and contextualize relevant items of device data during runtime and to export the modeled data to the target application.