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June 2019

What to Expect from the Open Glossary of Edge Computing in 2019

By Blog, Open Glossary of Edge Computing

By Alex Marcham, LF Edge and State of the Edge Contributor and Technical Marketing Manager at Vapor IO, and Matt Trifiro, Co-Chair at State of the Edge; Chair at Open Glossary of Edge Computing and CMO at Vapor IO

The Open Glossary of Edge Computing began as a utilitarian appendix to the 2018 State of the Edge report. It had humble goals: to cut through the morass of vendor- and pundit-driven definitions around edge computing and, instead, deliver a crisply-defined common lexicon that would enhance understanding and accelerate conversations around all things edge.

Very quickly, it became clear that the Open Glossary could be a powerful and unifying force in the fledgling world of edge computing and that no one entity should own it. Instead, everybody should own it. Thus began our partnership with The Linux Foundation. We converted the glossary into a GitHub repo, placed it under a Creative Commons license, and created an open source project around it.

In January 2019, the Open Glossary became one of the founding projects of LF Edge, the Linux Foundation’s umbrella group for edge computing projects. The Open Glossary now plays a critical role that spans all of the LF Edge projects with its mission to collaborate around a single point of reference for edge computing terminology. This community-driven lexicon helps mitigate confusing marketing buzzwords by offering a foundation of clear and well-understood words and phrases that can be used by everyone.

In 2019, the momentum of the Open Glossary project will continue unabated. Open Glossary has four main projects this year, building on its successes in 2018:

Grow the Community

The Open Glossary project depends on open collaboration, and the community is actively building engagement by seeking out participation from key stakeholder groups in edge computing. Within The Linux Foundation itself, the Open Glossary team has sought input from not only all of the LF Edge projects but also adjacent projects, such as the CNCF’s Kubernetes IoT and Edge working group. In addition, the Open Glossary has formed alliances with other edge computing groups and foundations, including the TIA, iMasons, and the Open19 Foundation. Partnering with other non-profits and consortia will help the project grow its base of passionate collaborators who are dedicated to expanding and improving the Open Glossary.

The Taxonomy Project

Readers of the Open Glossary want more than mere definitions; they want to know how the constituent parts fit together as a whole. To answer this request, the Open Glossary has begun the Taxonomy Project, a working group that seeks to create a classification system for edge computing across three core areas:

  • Edge infrastructure
  • Edge devices
  • Edge software

The Taxonomy Project will draw upon the expertise of subject matter experts in each of the core areas to define and hopefully also visualize the complex relationships between the different components in edge computing. The Taxonomy Project WG is being led by Alex Marcham and the Open Glossary will publish the first taxonomies in Q3 2019.

The Edge Computing Landscape Map

At the request of The Linux Foundation, the State of the Edge project also contributed its Edge Computing Landscape Map, which is now a working group under the auspices of the Open Glossary. The Landscape WG is being led by Wesley Reisz and has just started out. Currently, they have regular weekly meetings (Tuesdays at noon Pacific Time) and the group is actively working on refining the categories the LF Edge Landscape. The group seeks wider participation and will be asking for help to test and validate the proposed categories.

You can see the landscape map evolve at https://landscape.lfedge.org and join the mailing list here.

Glossary 2.0

Edge computing is a rapidly evolving area of development, deployment and discussion, and the Open Glossary contributors aim to keep the glossary up to date with the latest developments in industry and academia, driven by contributions from our project members. During 2019, the Open Glossary team aims to release its 2.0 version of the Open Glossary, which will be a timely update that continues to form the basis for clear and concise communication on the edge.

To see open issues and pull requests or to make contributions, visit the GitHub repo. Go here to join the mailing list.

In Summary

2019 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for edge technologies, their proponents and of course their end users. The Open Glossary project, as part of The Linux Foundation, is dedicated to continuing its unique mission of bringing a single, open and definitive lingua franca to the world of edge computing. We hope you’ll join us during 2019 as we focus on these goals for the project, and look forward to your contributions.

Contributors can get involved with the Open Glossary project by joining the mailing lists and contributing and commenting on the GitHub repository for the project.

Alex Marcham is a technical marketing manager at Vapor IO. He is one of the primary contributors to the Open Glossary and leads the Taxonomy Project working group. Matt Trifiro is CMO of Vapor IO and is the Chair of the Open Glossary project.

June 26, 2019

Your Path to Edge Computing: Akraino Edge Stack’s Release 1

By Akraino, Blog

By Kandan Kathirvel, Akraino Edge Stack TSC-Chair and Tina Tsou, Akraino Edge Stack TSC Co-Chair

The Akraino community was proud to announce the availability of its release 1 on June 6th. The community has experienced extremely rapid growth over the past year, in terms of both membership and community activity: Akraino includes broad contributions from across LF Edge, with 60% of LF Edge’s 60+ members contributing to project, as well as several other developers across the globe.

Before Akraino, developers had to download multiple open source software packages and integrate/test on deployable hardware, which prolonged innovation and increased cost. The Akraino community came up with a brilliant way to solve this integration challenge with the Blueprint model.

An Akraino Blueprint is not just a diagram; it’s real code that brings everything together so users can download and deploy the edge stack in their own environment to address a specific edge use case. Example use cases include IoT gateway, MEC for connected car, and a RAN intelligent controller that enables 5G infrastructure.

The Blueprints address interoperability, packaging, and testing under open standards, which reduces both overall deployment costs and integration time by users. The Akraino community will supply Blueprints across the LF Edge portfolio of projects, with plans to address 5G, IoT and a range of other edge use cases.

The key strength of the Akraino community is the well-defined process to welcome new Blueprints, new members, users and developers. The technical community is comprised of a Technical Steering committee (TSC), which consists of representatives from across member companies. The TSC acts as a “watchdog” to set process, monitor the community, and ensure open collaboration. In addition to the TSC, the Akraino community has seven sub-committees focused on much-needed areas such as security, edge APIs, CI and validation labs, upstream collaborations, documentation, process and community. Regular meetings are scheduled to ensure broader collaboration and accelerate progress on the various projects. The community calendar can be found here. It is not necessary to be a member to join the community calls, we invite anyone interested in learning more to join!

The above picture illustrates the primary use of Akraino R1 Blueprints and its targeted deployment areas. The release 1 Blueprints cover everything from a larger deployment in a telco-based edge cloud to a smaller deployment, such as in a public building like a stadium. Each Blueprint is validated via community standards on real physical lab hardware, hosted by either the community or the users.

Akraino Edge Stack prides itself on continuous refinement and development to ensure the success of Blueprints and projects. The community is already planning R2, which will include both new Blueprints and enhancements to existing Blueprints, tools for automated Blueprint validations, defined edge API’s, new community lab hardware, and much more. For future events and meetings please visit: https://wiki.akraino.org/display/AK/Akraino+TSC+Group+Calendar.

 

June 12, 2019

TelecomTV: Akraino Edge Stack makes its formal debut with telco-specific architecture blueprints for 5G and IoT

By Akraino, In the News
  • Inaugural release unifies multiple sectors of the edge;
  • Release 1 delivers tested and validated deployment-ready blueprints;
  • Creating a framework for defining and standardising APIs across stacks;
  • Akraino is part of the LF Edge organisation

Forget the expanding universe, for telcos it is all about the ever-expanding network edge, which just got a little bit bigger yesterday with the news that the Akraino open source project has published its first software release. Although it was only launched in February 2018, Akraino had a rich pedigree with seed code from AT&T and has enjoyed plenty of support during its short time under the Linux Foundation’s LF Edge umbrella.

Akraino Edge Stack, to give the project its full name, is focused on creating an open source software stack that supports a high-availability cloud stack optimised for edge computing systems and applications. It is being designed to improve the state of edge cloud infrastructure for enterprise edge, OTT edge, as well as telecoms edge networks. The project promises to give users new levels of flexibility to scale their edge cloud services quickly, to maximise the applications and functions supported at the edge, and to help ensure the reliability of critical systems.

“Akraino Release 1 represents the first milestone towards creation of a much-needed common framework for edge solutions that address a diverse set of edge use cases,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “With the support of experts from all across the industry, we are paving the way to enable and support future technology at the edge.”

Read the full article here.

June 7, 2019

LinuxGuizmos: LF Edge announces first Akraino release for open edge computing

By Akraino, EdgeX Foundry, In the News, Project EVE

The Linux Foundation’s LF Edge project announced the first release of the Akraino Edge Stack with 10 “blueprints” for different edge computing scenarios. Also: LF Edge recently announced new members and the transfer of seed code from Zededa to Project EVE.

The Akraino Edge Stack project, which earlier this year was folded into the Linux Foundation’s LF Edge umbrella initiative for open source edge computing, announced the availability of Akraino Edge Stack Release 1 (Akraino R1). Last month, LF Edge announced new members and further momentum behind its Project EVE edge technology. More recently Linux Journal’s Doc Searls published a piece on the LF’s 5G efforts and argued for more grass-roots involvement in LF Edge (see farther below).

Read the full article here.

June 7, 2019

Converge! Network Digest: LF Edge marks first release of Akraino

By Akraino, In the News

LF Edge marked the first release of Akraino Edge Stack Release 1, which is an open source software stack for edge computing systems and applications.

LF Edge is part of the Linux Foundation.

“Akraino R1 represents the first milestone towards creation of a much-needed common framework for edge solutions that address a diverse set of edge use cases,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “With the support of experts from all across the industry, we are paving the way to enable and support future technology at the edge.”

Akraino is currently comprised of 11+ blueprint families with 19+ specific blueprints under development to support a variety of edge use cases.

Read the full article here.

June 6, 2019

FierceWireless: Akraino Edge stack emerges from LF Edge to provide framework for 5G, IoT

By Akraino, In the News

LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation, announced the availability of Akraino Edge Stack Release 1, setting a framework to address 5G, IoT and a range of edge use cases.

LF Edge was first launched in January with a mission to create a unified open source framework for the edge. It started with more than 60 founding members and grew from there. At that time, Akraino Edge Stack was announced as one of its projects.

Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT at the foundation, said the Akraino project continues its momentum with operators’ network edge and the enterprise/IoT edge that emanates out of it.

Read the full article here.

June 6, 2019

SDxCentral: LF Edge Targets Telcos With Akraino Edge Stack Release

By Akraino, In the News, Uncategorized

Akraino Edge Stack, an open source edge computing project aimed at addressing telecom, enterprise, and industrial IoT use cases, is now available with 10 deployment-ready blueprints. The project, housed under the LF Edge group, is an open source software stack that is also designed to improve and expand the flexibility of edge cloud services in the 5G core, virtual radio access networks (vRAN), universal CPE (uCPE), SD-WAN, and carrier edge media processing.

“From a telco perspective we believe that there are three things that they’re extremely well equipped with, and that’s what differentiates the telcos in this world of edge,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager of edge, IoT, and networking at Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation launched Akraino in early 2018, and it formed LF Edge in January as an umbrella group for its five open source edge computing projects.

Read the full article here.

June 6, 2019

SmarterMSP: LF Edge launches frameworks for building edge solutions

By Akraino, In the News

The Linux Foundation wants to make it simpler for managed service providers (MSPs) to construct their own edge computing solutions using open source software. The LF Edge arm of the Linux Foundation announced the availability of a set of frameworks and validated reference architectures for build edge solutions, for everything from Internet of Things (IoT) environments to 5G wireless networking services based on the Akraino Edge Stack.

Officially launched last year, Release 1 of the Akraino Edge Stack provides access to more than 11 blueprint classes, with more than an additional 19 blueprints under development. Arpit Joshipura, general manager for networking, automation, edge, and IoT at the Linux Foundation, says that unlike other reference architectures, these blueprints are made up of declarative open source components and associated best practices. This makes it simpler to build, deploy, secure, and manage edge computing platforms.

Read the full article here.

June 6, 2019

Akraino Edge Stack Issues Premier Release, Sets Framework to Enable 5G, IoT Edge Application Ecosystem

By Announcement, Uncategorized
  • Inaugural release unifies multiple sectors of the edge across disciplines, including  IoT, Enterprise, Telecom, and Cloud
  • Delivers tested and validated deployment-ready blueprints
  • Creates framework for defining and standardizing APIs across stacks, via upstream/downstream collaboration

SAN FRANCISCO –  June 6, 2019 – LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced the availability of Akraino Edge Stack Release 1 (“Akraino R1”).  Created via broad community collaboration, Akraino’s premier release unlocks the power of intelligent edge with deployable, self-certified blueprints for a diverse set of  edge use cases.

Launched in 2018, and now part of the LF Edge umbrella, Akraino Edge Stack is creating an open source software stack that supports a high-availability cloud stack optimized for edge computing systems and applications. Designed to improve the state of edge cloud infrastructure for enterprise edge, OTT edge, and carrier edge networks, it offers users new levels of flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, to maximize the applications and functions supported at the edge, and to help ensure the reliability of systems that must be up at all times.

“Akraino R1 represents the first milestone towards creation of a much-needed common framework for edge solutions that address a diverse set of edge use cases,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “With the support of experts from all across the industry, we are paving the way to enable and support future technology at the edge.”

About Akraino R1

Akraino R1 delivers the first iteration towards new levels of flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, maximize efficiency, and deliver high availability for deployed services. It delivers a deployable and fully functional edge stack for edge use cases ranging from Industrial IoT, Telco 5G Core & vRAN, uCPE, SDWAN, edge media processing, and carrier edge media processing. As the premier release, it opens doors to further enhancements and development to support edge infrastructure.

Akraino is currently comprised of 11+ blueprint families with 19+ specific blueprints under development to support a variety of edge use cases. The community tests and validates the blueprints on real hardware labs supported by users and community members.

Akraino R1 includes 10 “ready and proven” blueprints, including:

    • Radio Edge Cloud (REC), part of the Telco Appliance Blueprint Family, REC is a telco- grade edge cloud platform for  containers. It’s main use case is supporting the near real-time RAN Intelligent Controller, a new network element that enables external applications to control aspects of the 5G radio network. REC is the first example of the Telco Appliance Blueprint family which provides a reusable set of modules that will be used to create sibling blueprints for other purpose tuned near real time appliances.
    • Integrated Edge Cloud (IEC) Type 1 (Small Edge) & 2 (Medium Edge) is a platform that enables new functionalities and business models on the network edge. It targets telco applications with small and medium deployments of Edge Cloud and supports Arm processors and architecture.
    • The Network Cloud family of blueprints enables hardware configuration and fully automated deployment of multiple edge sites from a remote Regional Controller. Specific Network Cloud blueprints in R1 include Unicycle with SR-IOV; Unicycle with OVS-DPDK; and Rover, which supports multiple Telco and Enterprise edge use cases including 5G.
    • The StarlingX Far Edge Distributed Cloud blueprint addresses edge and far edge use cases at high-density locations such as malls, airports and sports stadiums to support value added services (such as caching, processing, and analyzing data) at these events and locations.
    • Edge Lightweight and IOT (ELIOT) supports use cases for IOT gateway and uCPE (SD-WAN). Addressing Industrial IoT, smart cities, and uCPE, ELIOT enables a lightweight software stack which can be deployed on edge nodes with limited hardware capacity.
    • The Kubernetes-Native Infrastructure (KNI) Provider Access Edge blueprint leverages best practices from Kubernetes to manage edge computing stacks at scale and with a consistent, uniform user experience from the infrastructure up to the workloads, on bare metal or public cloud.

Akraino Edge Stack is working in an iterative approach with continuous automation and enhancements. Additions and enhancements will be made to the baseline functionality delivered in Akraino R1.

More information on Akraino R1, including links to documentation, can be found here. For information on how to get involved with LF Edge and its projects, visit https://www.lfedge.org/.

Looking Ahead

The community is already planning R2, which will include both new blueprints and enhancements to existing blueprints, tools for automated blueprint validations, defined edge API’s, and new community lab hardware.  

Linux Foundation general manager of Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, Arpit Joshipura, will give a keynote presentation at Open Source Summit China about open source edge technologies on Tuesday, June 25.

LF Edge will host a workshop focused on Akraino and other LF Edge projects onsite at Open Source Summit North America, August 21-23 in San Diego, Calif. Entitled “State of the (LF) Edge,” more details are available here.

Support From Contributing Members

Arm
“Our unique combination of Arm® Neoverse™ IP, software, and open source collaborative ​efforts underscore our commitment to enabling developers with the tools needed to seamlessly design and deploy solutions scaling from edge to cloud,” said Kevin Ryan, senior director, Software Ecosystem, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm and LF Edge Governing Board Member. “We are incredibly proud to support the work the Akraino community is doing as we help our ecosystem build the next generation infrastructure.”

AT&T
“We’re very excited for the first release and the continued progress of Akraino,” said Oliver Spatscheck, former Akraino Governing Board chair and assistant vice president at AT&T Labs. “AT&T is proud to be part of this community, and we remain committed to supporting an open source first strategy. Akraino is one of the many success stories of open source, and we look forward to accelerating innovation through collaboration.”

Ericsson
“Congratulations to the Akraino community on their first release and the value it brings to the open source Edge ecosystem,” said Martin Backstrom, head of Technology & Portfolio, Solution Area – Cloud & NFV Infrastructure, Ericsson. “Ericsson is at the forefront of 5G evolution driving innovation across edge computing, cloud native, AI/ML, Automation, Orchestration and supporting and contributing code to various open source projects. In Akraino, Ericsson contributed and validated Network Cloud Unicycle with OVS-DPDK blue print and also introduced support for OVS-DPDK in Airship. We are looking forward to continuous growth of Akraino to support more use cases across 5G, Edge and IoT areas in the coming releases.”

Huawei
“Huawei congratulates to the first successful of Akraino. There are many scenarios for edge computing, and the market space is huge. Only truly open platforms can release the potential of edge computing. The open source blueprints provided by the Akraino community provides a collaborative platform for building industry factual standards and fostering a rich application ecosystem to accelerate industry maturity. As digitalization reaches every industry and organization, the edge and cloud collaboration is becoming more important. Huawei is pleased to be working together with partners on the ELIOT blueprint for enterprise edge and IoT gateways, and will further contribute more blueprints.”  – Bill Ren, Chief Open Source Liaison Officer, Huawei

Intel
“The Akraino Edge Stack release represents a significant milestone for open source collaborations in edge computing to reflect alignment across industry segments on common integration, validation criteria and tools for solution stacks. Blueprints, also known as common solution stacks, for network and edge cloud use cases will be essential for Akraino adoption at scale. Intel looks forward to helping further drive community involvement and adoption across markets, including Industrial IoT.” – Imad Sousou, corporate vice president and general manager of System Software Products, Intel Corporation

Juniper
“The momentum created by the Akraino and LF Edge communities has been remarkable. In collaborating with other community members, the group has helped drive a fully-integrated, deployable stack for the provider access edge for release 1 of Akraino,” stated Sukhdev Kapur, Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks. “Akraino is a diverse community whose charter is to drive multiple edge use cases and provide end-to-end fully integrated and tested solutions that are reproducible and deployable. I applaud my fellow Technical Steering Committee Members whose contributions will surely help drive innovation of cloud-native capabilities at the edge of production networks.”  

MobiledgeX
“We at MobiledgeX are excited to be an active contributor to the Akraino R1 blueprints and to be leading the Developer API subgroup. We will contribute our own developer facing APIs and ensure applications can easily discover and take advantage of the Akraino powered Edge infrastructure,” said Sunay Tripathi, chief technology officer, MobiledgeX.

Nokia
“Nokia celebrates the Release 1 of Akraino and the Radio Edge Cloud (REC) project. Nokia brings to REC its long experience in building network elements, creating a telco grade container platform that is optimal for edge cloud deployments, such as O-RAN’s RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC). We are proud to be members of Akraino and to participate in creating key pieces of the future Radio Access.” – Tommi Hiltunen, head of Cloud Infrastructure R&D at Nokia Mobile Networks, Cloud RAN

NTT
“LF Edge has accelerated edge innovation effectively engaging traditional telecom service providers, leading edge IoT developers and other networked stakeholders in open source projects. We regard LF Edge as one of the most essential  open ecosystems for cross-industry collaboration in the 5G era. Akraino Release 1 is the first major step towards encouraging deployment of innovative edge architecture and implementation of 5G use cases. We actively promote edge computing strategy and collaborative development within the Akraino project and are looking forward to LF Edge’s continued progress with the support from the community.” –  Yukari Tsuji, vice president, head of NTT Network Technology Laboratories Corp.

RedHat
“Red Hat congratulates The Linux Foundation Edge and the Akraino open source community for achieving this important milestone. We are encouraged by the progress of the efforts in the Akraino project and we will continue to support its continued evolution and progress in the project as well as through our related contributions to VCO with OPNFV, and our continued efforts to make NFVI manageable at the network edge. We look forward to helping build solutions in the very important areas of Edge and IoT.” – Tom Nadeau, technical director, NFV, RedHat

Seagate
“Seagate congratulates the LFEdge community on this successful release, which is a key milestone in driving the edge architecture and doing that with a true partnership approach. Building a flexible solution that enables businesses across industries to adapt and grow is critical to Seagate. We are excited to be working alongside the community to advance the architecture of the edge, and to drive data management best practices.” – John Morris, chief technology officer, Seagate

Wind River
“The StarlingX project has defined a Far Edge Distributed Cloud blueprint that provides a fully featured cloud for distributed edge use cases. We’re looking forward to further collaborating with the Akraino community, the LF Edge and other upstream communities to innovate and solve critical problems for the edge. The Far Edge Distributed Cloud blueprint integrates StarlingX with the EdgeX Foundry core APIs and is a good example of collaboration between edge projects, each providing key capabilities.” – Glenn Seiler, vice president, Open Source Strategy, Wind River

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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June 6, 2019

IoT World Today: Edge Computing Middleware: How It Can Tame IoT Complexity

By EdgeX Foundry, In the News

The benefits of using edge computing middleware and tips for selecting the best approach for taming IoT complexity.

Edge computing middleware in an industrial or enterprise software architecture is akin to plumbing on steroids. This software layer must efficiently connect different applications, data sources, devices (such as sensors and endpoints), services and business entities.

Today, IoT and industrial IoT within an organization can pose enormous complexity because of the sheer scale of edge projects. The ability to run cloud and AI applications at the network edge only increases the level of intricacy.

Infrastructure management alone “can quickly become a problem of nightmarish proportions at the edge,” said IDC Analyst Ashish Nadkami.

The advent of cloud computing helped IoT explode. As a result, edge computing can reduce the cost of cloud performance by putting compute power close to the network edge and devices, said Keith Steele, chairman of the EdgeX Foundry technical steering committee.

“There are many problems associated with edge with lots of software and massive numbers of protocols around this,” Steele added. “Sometimes there is hardware fragmentation and silicon fragmentation. What we have at the edge is a real problem because it’s very heterogeneous, with many components, operating systems and silicon. Edge middleware is how we bring it together.”

Read the full article here.

June 5, 2019
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