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eKuiper Issues 1.10 Release Empowering Edge Computing with Advanced Analytics and Enhanced Features

By Blog, eKuiper, Project Release

eKuiper—a lightweight IoT data analytics and streaming software—is now available in its 1.10 release. eKuiper, an LF Edge project, migrates real-time cloud streaming analytics frameworks such as Apache Spark, Apache Storm and Apache Flink to the edge. eKuiper references these cloud streaming frameworks, incorporates any special requirements of edge analytics and introduces rule engine, which is based on Source, SQL (business logic) and Sink; rule engine is used for developing streaming applications at the edge.

We are thrilled to announce the highly anticipated release of eKuiper version 1.10.0, marking a significant milestone as our first double-digit release. This remarkable release boasts an extensive array of features and a growing community of contributors, for whom we express our deepest gratitude. 

In this release, our top priority was enhancing the product’s core dependencies. Notably, we upgraded the Go language version to 1.20, ensuring optimal performance and compatibility. Additionally, eKuiper now extends support for the latest major version of Minnesota (v3) from EdgeX, further expanding its interoperability capabilities. While driving advancements in expressiveness, connectivity, and usability, we diligently focused on maintaining a delicate balance between feature richness and the ability to cater to edge deployments. Our commitment to delivering a streamlined experience for edge computing remains unwavering.

The 1.10 release introduces several significant new features, including:

  • Rule scheduling:
    • Empower the edge to autonomously manage rule execution, allowing for enhanced flexibility and efficiency in edge computing environments.
  • EdgeX Minnesota support:
    • Seamlessly integrate with the latest major version of EdgeX.
  • Enhanced file sink:
    • Expand the capabilities of the file sink by supporting a wider range of file types, introducing rolling and compression features for efficient data storage and management.
  • Kafka sink:
    • Introduce a new sink to write rule results directly to Kafka, enabling seamless integration with Kafka-based data pipelines and stream processing workflows.
  • SQL source/sink enhancement:
    • Enhance the SQL source/sink functionality by introducing support for the new ClickHouse driver. Additionally, enable the configuration of maximum connections to optimize performance in scenarios with high connection volumes.
  • Batch strategy for sink:
    • Introduce common properties for sinks to configure batch strategies, enabling efficient data handling and reducing I/O operations as needed.
  • Complex data extraction for sink:
    • Simplify data transformation and processing by introducing common properties for sinks to extract specific data fields and optimize column selection, resulting in improved data processing performance.
  • Array type payload support:
    • Enhance the source to support array type payloads, allowing for seamless handling and processing of complex data structures.
  • Unnest function:
    • Introduce the unnest function, enabling the conversion of array types into multiple lines of data, facilitating more granular and detailed data processing.
  • Array and object functions:
    • Expand the array and object functions library with over 10 additional functions, providing extensive support for complex data processing scenarios.
  • Dot notation for nested field access:
    • Introduce dot notation to access nested fields within data structures, simplifying data retrieval and manipulation within complex nested hierarchies.
  • External state access in Redis:
    • Enable the ability to read external state information from Redis, facilitating efficient data retrieval and integration with external applications.
  • SQL syntax enhancements:
    • Enhance the SQL syntax by introducing support for expressions in array indexing, enabling more flexible and dynamic array operations within SQL queries.
  • Rule-related functions:
    • Introduce additional functions to retrieve the current rule ID and enable pipeline delay, providing greater control and flexibility in rule execution and pipeline management.
  • Graph API for lookup table:
    • Enabling efficient lookup table and lookup join in Graph API.

With this release, we reaffirm our dedication to empowering organizations with a cutting-edge, reliable, and user-friendly solution for harnessing the full potential of edge analytics and stream processing. Learn more about these and other features of eKuiper’s 1.10 release in the release notes.

What’s Next

In our upcoming version, we are thrilled to prioritize further advancements in the streaming and SQL runtime of eKuiper. Our focus will revolve around enriching the window functionality, particularly empowering the event window to cater to a wider range of scenarios. To ensure seamless integration and compatibility, we are committed to adding and refining the SQL syntax to align with standard SQL specifications. This will provide users with a familiar and intuitive experience when working with eKuiper, while enabling greater flexibility and ease of use.

Stay tuned for more updates and join us on this exciting journey as we continue to shape the future of edge computing with eKuiper.

LF Edge Member Spotlight: Edgenesis

By Blog, LF Edge, Member Spotlight

Author: Yongli Chen, founder & CEO at Edgenesis

About Edgenesis

Edgenesis is an open-source IoT interoperability and edge computing solution provider. 

Edgenesis is a technology company specializing in industrial edge solutions. We aim to drive standardization in device-driven IoT applications and offer flexible, efficient solutions to optimize production processes and reduce costs. Our team includes top talent from companies like Microsoft, McKinsey, Google, and Amazon, and we pride ourselves on our professionalism and efficiency. 

Using a Kubernetes-native development framework, we help clients deploy and manage devices and applications for various use cases. Our solutions provide critical data on devices and production processes, empowering clients to make data-driven decisions and stay competitive in the manufacturing industry. At Edgenesis, we are dedicated to innovation, constantly striving to improve our products and services to offer cutting-edge solutions. Our goal is to create a smarter, more connected world by leveraging our expertise in industrial edge solutions.

Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?

Mobile Internet was mostly about mobile phones connecting to the Internet to consume content. We’re now transitioning to the hyper-connected world era where digital intersects with every aspect of the physical world around us. Therefore digital solutions should mimic physical interactions. We believe in an ecosystem and the ability for solutions to interact across different vendors and providers. Now more than ever collaboration across the community is of importance. Therefore, we like to embrace an open-source model for any of our offerings.

Why did you join LF Edge and what sort of impact do you think LF Edge has on the edge, networking, and IoT industries?

We want to work with the LF Edge umbrella to facilitate the development of edge computing in a structured, collaborative way.

What do you see as the top benefits of being part of the LF Edge community?

One of the many benefits we see in being part of the LF Edge project community is the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded professionals across the globe. 

What sort of contributions has your team made (or plans to make) to the community, ecosystem through LF Edge participation?

Shifu, an open source Kubernetes-native industrial edge which enables IoT interoperability. Shifu virtualizes IoT devices into Kubernetes pods, and gives you the all-in-one Kubernetes cluster which orchestrates IoT devices and applications at the same time.

What sets LF Edge apart from other industry alliances?

It’s the only organization that focuses solely on all aspects of edge computing across verticals. 

 

Efficiently Collect, Transform and Transit Your Data With eKuiper 1.9 Release

By Blog, eKuiper, Project Release

eKuiper—a lightweight IoT data analytics and streaming software—is now available in its 1.9.0 release. eKuiper, an LF Edge project, migrates real-time cloud streaming analytics frameworks such as Apache Spark, Apache Storm and Apache Flink to the edge. eKuiper references these cloud streaming frameworks, incorporates any special requirements of edge analytics and introduces rule engine, which is based on Source, SQL (business logic) and Sink; rule engine is used for developing streaming applications at the edge.

eKuiper 1.9 release continues to enhance the source/sink connectors to make it easier to connect and transmit data with lower bandwidth. The community has also enhanced the data transformation ability to flexibly encode and compress any part of your data. The 1.9 release adds a number of significant new features, among them are

  • Multiple neuron connection to analyze collected data from multiple IOT gateways together
  • MQTT sink/source compression/decompression support, save bandwidth for edge cloud communication
  • HTTPPull source & REST sink support dynamic token based authentication, connect to more services out of box
  • More transformation and compression functions added, handle your data flexibly
  • Partial data export/import, migrate only interested rules and the dependencies
  • Run python plugin in conda virtual environment, separate the python runtime env

Learn more about these and other features of eKuiper’s 1.9 release in the release notes.

What’s next

In the next release, the community will adapt to the EdgeX Foundry‘s Minnesota version, while exploring the use of external states such as Redis states to achieve persistent states.

Akraino and CAMARA Communities Join Forces to Boost API Integration in Edge Computing

By Akraino, Blog

At the Hefei High-tech Integrated Circuit Incubation Center in Anhui Province, a panel discussion moderated by Guanyu Zhu from Huawei’s Cloud Network OSDT team brought together experts from the Akraino and CAMARA communities, along with industry professionals, to explore the significance of APIs in edge computing and the potential for collaboration between the two communities. Prominent panelists included Tina Tsou, LF Edge Board Chair, Leo Li from Akraino TSC, Gao Chen, the senior engineer from China Unicom, and Shuting Qing, the open-source ecology expert from Huawei’s Cloud Network OSDT.

Shuting Qing provided insights into the origins of the CAMARA project, explaining that “Capability exposure aims to encapsulate these capabilities into a simple interface and expose it to developers for everyone to use.” CAMARA is a vital initiative designed to generate new revenue streams for European operators that have made substantial investments in 4G/5G networks. Qing emphasized the need to clarify the value scenarios and focus on monetization.

Leo Li discussed Akraino’s eagerness to collaborate with emerging communities like CAMARA, emphasizing the need for standardized edge computing hardware modules and the adoption of novel hardware interface technologies such as Ethernet, PCIe, and UCIe. Li highlighted the importance of integrating standardized hardware with an API-based business development model, stating, “We hope to further enhance the business flexibility of operators while promoting hardware standardization, and reduce costs and power consumption through standardization in conjunction with the trend of service APIization.”

The panelists also shared their views on the commercial realization of telecom edge cloud. Gao Chen emphasized the standardization of east-west interfaces, highlighting the importance of providing a unified and user-friendly API to access network capabilities, while Tina Tsou pointed out the potential benefits for various stakeholders, noting that “Edge computing can provide better performance and services, thereby increasing customer loyalty and revenue.”

Addressing potential challenges in implementing commercialization ideas, Leo Li indicated that “We believe that cost will be a crucial factor in the monetization process of edge cloud.” He advocated for standardizing hardware specifications and implementation methods and adopting an API-based business development model to minimize costs.

Tina Tsou expressed her expectations for the CAMARA community, emphasizing the need for more flexible and customizable edge computing capabilities, stronger equipment and data management capabilities, and enhanced security and credibility guarantees. She also called for increased cooperation with other open-source projects.

Shuting Qing and Tina Tsou shared their thoughts on how Akraino and CAMARA could work together to create a more open, collaborative, and innovative edge computing ecosystem. Qing considered that since CAMARA is discussing capability exposure, it would be worth exploring the integration of edge computing open capabilities, such as ETSI MP1, into the CAMARA. Meanwhile, Tsou proposed combining edge computing framework, openness, security and privacy protection, and application scenario expansion.

The panel discussion offered valuable insights into the role of APIs in edge computing and the potential collaboration between Akraino and CAMARA. As the industry continues to develop, the joint efforts of these two communities could result in a more open, collaborative, and innovative edge computing ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders.

Baetyl New Release Integrates With eKuiper and Delivers Edge to More Devices

By Baetyl, Blog, eKuiper, Project Release

Baetyl—an LF Edge project that extends cloud computing, data and service seamlessly to edge devices— has released v2.4.3 release. With the efforts of many active contributors, new functions have been added, and some existing functions have been continuously optimized since the previous v2.3.0 release. These new features continue to follow the cloud-native philosophy and build an open, secure, scalable, and controllable intelligent edge computing platform.

Compared to the previous Baetyl v2.3.0 releases, the new features and optimizations in v2.4.3 include:

  • Device management functionality has been refactored with the addition of a device template interface, support for calculating OT data collection values, support for IEC-104 protocol, updated OPC-UA and Modbus drivers, and updated driver-node binding logic;
  • Support for Windows platform has been added with the ability to generate Windows – platform images for the Baetyl edge main module;
  • Remote invocation has been implemented, allowing for remote access to specified edge services with results returned from the cloud;
  • New container mode with eKuiper as an optional system application;
  • New baetyl-rule module supports HTTP Target;
  • Adaptation to the highest K3s 1.24.4 version;
  • Fix workload type creation failure bug;

These new features are available and now you can view the release note here. Other features can be further explored by the developers, and Baetyl will continue to improve and optimize its functionality.

Integration with eKuiper

Baetyl uses eKuiper as a system optional application on the edge-side for stream processing and data analytics. The collaboration and integration with eKuiper increase the linkage between LF Edge projects and promote innovation. Platform and version adaptation enables Baetyl to run on more devices. The optimization of device management and new driver support prepare for the access of more devices with different protocols. From the point of eKuiper, this means you can deploy eKuiper more quickly and conveniently.

In the new version, the integration between Baetyl and eKuiper makes the following changes, including:

  • set mqtt client as Baetyl broker; 
  • mount eKuiper’s data file to the host to ensure no configuration loss; 
  • add k8s service to the eKuiper application to enable calling eKuiper’s open API from the host as well as from within the cluster to enable edge configuration changes; 
  • built-in eKuiper as an optional application in the Baetyl framework, so that eKuiper can be installed directly through Baetyl, eliminating the need for separate installation; 

After the integration, the Baetyl framework enhances the ability of edge message processing, while users can use Baetyl’s ability to use eKuiper more easily and quickly.

What’s next?

For future releases, the project is working on strengthening the management of non-intelligent devices at the edge, including providing

  • more comprehensive management functions for device models, devices, and drivers on the cloud management platform, 
  • a software gateway management module on the edge to support the ability of devices to connect through various industrial drivers,
  • a unified northbound connection protocol blink for access implementation.

The Baetyl project is also further expanding and optimizing the implementation of cloud storage at the underlying level, providing support for database storage outside of k8s crds. It’ll also enhance the integration with K8s cloud-native, providing more edge cloud-native capabilities for access, such as providing the ability to view edge description information, and so on.

Linux Foundation’s LF Edge and Open Grid Alliance Collaborate on Accelerating Innovation for Reimagining the Edge

By Announcement

Initial focus on collaboration with LF Edge for functional specification of the Grid Nodes 

BARCELONA, Mobile World Congress 2023 – February 27, 2023 The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, and the Open Grid Alliance (OGA) , an  organization focused on evolving the Internet into a worldwide platform capable of running global services on shared infrastructure, today announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for formal collaboration. Collaboration includes multiple foundations across the Linux Foundation with LF Edge being the primary.

Catalyzed by the emergence of edge infrastructure, 5G networks and billions of IoT devices, the grid is the next step in the evolution of the Internet. Globally distributed, the grid weaves together a public and private fabric of compute, data and intelligence to enable contextually aware, immersive applications at the edge, on demand.

“Co-creation across multiple sectors contributing to ´dirt-to-cloud´ stack of the Open Grid is the core principle of the OGA. This demands deep collaboration with the industry bodies influencing various parts of this stack. We are excited to partner with the Linux Foundation as we start to lay the foundation for this stack”, said Kaniz Mahdi, Chairperson of the OGA, and SVP Technology Architecture & Innovation, Deutsche Telekom.

Edge computing places applications and services close to the point of use, as the grid marries software-defined flexibility with edge infrastructure. LF Edge projects provide the required automation for edge infrastructure to be used to build autonomous grid infrastructure. These projects create new use cases and proof points that cover aspects of grid computing. The collaboration between LF Edge and OGA  is  aimed at creating synergies that will accelerate a full-scale, global and operational deployment of the Open Grid.   

“Aligning LF Edge with Open Grid Alliance is the next step in enabling the internet to distribute data when and where it’s needed,” said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “Integrating LF Edge architecture and use cases into open grid infrastructure provides a vendor-neutral approach to re-architect the Internet with the grid topologies needed to scale globally.

The agreement enables both organizations to formally support collaboration and work together in creating the open software defined and architected by OGA work groups. LF Edge projects and initiatives will work closely with the OGA workstreams to mutually develop the use cases and underlying technology of the Open Grid. 

About Open Grid Alliance

Open Grid Alliance (http://opengridalliance.org) is a member-supported 501(c)(6) organization that produces collaborative, vendor-neutral strategies to re-architect the Internet with grid topologies needed to scale globally. Founded in 2020 by over 30 global technology companies, the Open Grid Alliance welcomes additional participants, contributors, and supporters.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

# # #

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

 

 

 

 

Akraino Displays Robotics Blueprint at ONE Summit 2022

By Akraino, Blog, Event

By Jeff Brower, CEO at Signalogic & LF Edge community member

At the ONE Summit (ONES) in Seattle in November, the Linux Foundation Edge community (LF Edge) presented state-of-the-art edge computing in areas of Telco, Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, and Retail. The Akraino blueprint “Robot Architecture Based on SSES” was selected by the LF Edge conference showcase committee to exhibit in the Manufacturing category. This blueprint is architected by Fujitsu and focuses on two key areas in robotics:

  • manipulating elastic and non-uniform objects with variable shapes and surfaces, under variable environmental conditions
  • safe and reliable robot-human interaction

     

Fujitsu and Signalogic personnel manned the Manufacturing kiosk and we’re happy to report the exhibit was well-attended and effective. While we didn’t see a pre-pandemic level of attendance (maybe half compared to 2019), that was made up for by enthusiasm and energy of attendees and exhibitors. It was a great feeling driving into Seattle on a cold but sunny day, negotiating the city’s notoriously gnarly freeway design and traffic, arriving at the Sheraton, and then focusing 100% on presenting LF Edge, Akraino, and robotics to technical
and business developers ! We can confidently report that in-person conferences are back and thriving.

As it turns out, the conference format was effective for promoting robotics as well as Akraino and LF Edge. As one example, our blueprint’s project team leader, Fukano Haruhisa-san from Fujitsu’s development labs, gave a technical presentation in the early afternoon of Day 1.
Then later in the day, while dinner was served near the exhibit area, attendees who had attended Fukano-san’s presentation zero’d in on our kiosk. They had been busy juggling their conference schedule, but now they had questions and were ready to dig deeper. That was also our chance to promote LF Edge and Akraino. Naturally we took full advantage 😀

Customer discussions at the kiosk were both wide ranging and in-depth. Of particular concern is how to merge requirements for compute intensive onboard processing (i.e. on the robot) with cloud processing. There is a mix of needs, including mapping, handling unusual and as-yet-unknown objects, failure prediction, real-time speech recognition, background noise removal, natural language processing, and more.  Some needs can be met in the cloud, and some demand “never down, never out” capability. The former can be met with containerization, Kubernetes, and other CICD and automation tools, while the latter requires intensive onboard computation. Of course, any onboard computation faces severe limitations in size (form-factor), weight, and available power. It’s a fascinating problem in edge computing and engineering tradeoffs.

Given the effectiveness of the ONE Summit format, I strongly urge the LF Edge board to organize and promote more combined technical + exhibit events. The exhibit component does two important things: (i) encourages effort and progress among blueprint participants, and (ii) provides feedback to shape and guide blueprints moving forward. A little pressure to meet conference schedule deadlines and get demos working is a good thing, and the payoff for LF Edge is increased industry exposure for its member projects.

2022 LF Edge Annual Report – Update from the General Manager

By Blog, LF Edge

Launched four years ago, LF Edge has become the center of gravity for some of the most impactful open source edge computing projects in the world, building an open, modular framework for edge computing. Check out the section below on the 2022 LF Edge Annual Report update from Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge & IoT at the Linux Foundation.

LF Edge community members meet and collaborate in-person at ONE Summit 2022

Entering its fourth year as an umbrella project, LF Edge continues to grow and thrive, with more and more deployments and use cases across the globe and across verticals, from Telco, to Smart Home, to Industrial IoT, to AI, Robotics, and more. Check out the section below on the 2022 LF Edge Annual Report update from the LF Edge Board, written by Tina Tsou, Enterprise Architect, Arm and LF Edge Governing Board Chair.

As we enter into 2023, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the great progress made as a community last year. Although we’re learning to live with a global pandemic, an uncertain economy, and more colorful geopolitical issues, all of these challenges didn’t slow down the growth of open source communities; with more innovation, and integration across verticals as the industry marches towards digital innovation.

One of the things that makes me most proud of LF Edge project is the fact that the community did not miss a beat in our work-from-home virtual world. In 2022, the number of LF Edge contributors increased by 138%, with an average of 1,120+ contributors per year. With 65+ members and 25%+ year-over-year membership growth, more and more organizations have joined LF Edge’s mission of unifying and providing edge computing projects, IoT frameworks and solutions/blueprints to serve the needs of Telecom Edge, Cloud Edge, IoT Edge, Industrial IoT Edge, Enterprise Edge markets, and more.

I wanted to also take a moment to look ahead to 2023, as well as recognize how the edge industry has shifted over the past year. 2022 was the tipping point for 5G, Edge & IoT deployments, all possible with Open Solutions, Open Collaboration and Open Communities. This year, the global collaboration in open source projects (including LF Edge) is better than ever. Our community has worked collaboratively across geopolitical and macroeconomic headwinds, which we intend to continue in 2023.

I’d like to close by thanking our entire community and ecosystem of members, developers, partners, and users. I hope to see more in-person or virtual collaboration happen in LF Edge this year. Here’s to a fantastic 2023 as we build the last cloud together — the edge!

Read the full 2022 LF Edge Annual Report, with community highlights from all LF Edge projects, TSC Chair, General Manager, Outreach Chair, and more.

2022 LF Edge Annual Report – Update from the LF Edge Board

By Blog, LF Edge

Entering its fourth year as an umbrella project, LF Edge continues to grow and thrive, with more and more deployments and use cases across the globe and across verticals, from Telco, to Smart Home, to Industrial IoT, to AI, Robotics, and more. Check out the section below on the 2022 LF Edge Annual Report update from the LF Edge Board, written by Tina Tsou, Director Infrastructure Ecosystem at Arm and LF Edge Governing Board Chair.

In-person LF Edge Board meeting at ONE Summit 2022

A warm welcome to 2022’s newest LF Edge members: Y-Semi, Emerson, Qianyi, and XUAT — thank you for joining us this year. We hope to develop strong bonds with all our new members as we continue working together.

I’d also like to congratulate all of our individual project communities (Alvarium, Akraino, EdgeX Foundry, eKuiper, EVE, Fledge, HomeEdge, SDO) for the progress made this year. We’ve seen more and more realworld deployments across a diverse set of use cases (including blueprints to address Robotics, Smart Data, OT, Metaverse, 5G, and Education & Healthcare, among others) and improvements to functionality, security & data privacy, connectivity, and more.

One of the community’s biggest accomplishments in 2022 is the LF Edge Industry Solution Showcase, which debuted onsite ONE Summit in November. The event returned to an in-person format and we had the opportunity to showcase eight project demonstrations within the LF Edge booth kiosks, focused on specific verticals: Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, Telc, and Retail. This is the first step in highlighting LF Edge’s mainstream deployments across a broad spectrum of organizations and communities. 2023 will be even better, with more details on the myriad of ways LF Edge can enhance edge computing. None of this could be possible without member companies, developers, users and the LF Edge staff.

  • Member companies have been generously providing resources to run a shared community lab, CI/CD, and community activities –including hackathons, developer events and project mini summits.Big thanks to all who helped fund this important work across the board and helped make our projects stronger.
  • We also give thanks to developers working hard within and across LF Edge. We would not exist without our dedicated and passionate developers, who are the glue that binds our project communities together.
  • LF Edge Sub-committees. The collective efforts of the LF Edge Strategy Planning Committee (SPC), Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), and Outreach Committee yielded needed updates to LF Edge Project Lifecycle Description and Criteria, the creation of the Industry Solution Showcase; and the growing amplification of use cases and deployments.

With the rise of IoT, 5G/6G, AI, and Metaverse, Edge is at the precipice of leading technology innovations. The practical application of Edge Cloud in more industries and scenarios will become mainstream; the work of this community is paramount in setting the stage for scalable development of open source Edge technology and standards. We expect many opportunities (and some challenges) in 2023 and I am confident in the power of this strong community to continue playing a key role in Edge innovation.

Read the full 2022 LF Edge Annual Report, with community highlights from all LF Edge projects, TSC Chair, General Manager, Outreach Chair, and more.

LF Edge in 2022 – A Sneak-Peek at Cumulative Innovation in the Open Edge

By Blog, LF Edge

Edge Computing — as defined by the 2021 State of the Edge Report — is the delivery of computing capabilities to the logical extremes of a network in order to improve the performance, security, operating cost and reliability of applications and services. As a natural extension of cloud computing — and estimated by analysts to be at least four times the size of cloud computing — the edge cloud construct is increasingly viewed as a key enabler for the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in which the widespread deployment of IoT, the global sharing economy, and the increase of zero marginal cost manufacturing deliver unprecedented communication-driven opportunities with massive economies of scale.

Now in its third year as an umbrella organization, LF Edge has become the center of gravity for some of the most impactful open source edge computing projects in the world, building an open, modular framework for edge computing. LF Edge’s common governance and collaborative resources unify open the edge market, with massive global industry support accelerating the adoption and deployment of edge applications across sectors verticals, including  Telecommunications, Cloud, IoT, Industrial IoT, Retail, AI/ML, Factory Floor, Smart Home, and more. 

As data gravity continues to shift away from the centralized cloud to a distribution from edge to cloud, organizations of all types benefit from edge computing, yielding lower latency, reduced bandwidth costs, and maximized security and privacy; it means the work of LF Edge is more crucial than ever. Key impacts of LF Edge in 2022 are evidenced by both the project’s tenet publications, and a robust set of new use cases in deployment. Highlights include:

  • At the Olympic Games Beijing 2022, Tencent collaborated with China Unicom and created a multi-access edge computing (MEC) platform to track and analyze real-time traffic data, based on Akraino’s Connected Vehicle Blueprint.
  • Project Alvarium is providing trustworthy sustainability reporting and validated carbon emission measurements for organizations that are accurately tracking their carbon footprint.
  • UC Davis and Opus One uses Fledge to create safer wine-making conditions via multi-node wireless sensor network to produce world class wine.
  • Open Horizon components were leveraged in the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, which successfully sailed across the Atlantic ocean unmanned. 
  • Retailers use EdgeX Foundry to combine POS, RFID, Weight Scale and Computer Vision data to alert associates in real time, improving self-checkout efficiency and saving costs.  
  • A hiker used Fledge to collect temperature, humidity and air quality data while hiking on the beautiful Laugavegur trail in Iceland.

The complete annual report will include a culmination and summary of the many works done by the broader LF Edge community. It’ll be available in January 2023. Stay tuned!