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The Linux Foundation Supports Asian Communities

By Blog, LF Edge, Linux Foundation News

The Linux Foundation and its communities are deeply concerned about the rise in attacks against Asian Americans and condemn this violence. It is devastating to hear over and over again of the attacks and vitriol against Asian communities, which have increased substantially during the pandemic.

We stand in support with all those that have experienced this hate, and to the families of those who have been killed as a result. Racism, intolerance and inequality have no place in the world, our country, the tech industry or in open source communities.

We firmly believe that we are all at our best when we work together, treat each other with respect and equality and without hate or vitriol.

This blog originally ran on the Linux Foundation website.

March 30, 2021

State of the Edge 2021 Report

By Blog, LF Edge, State of the Edge

Written by Jacob Smith, State of the Edge Co-Chair and VP Bare Metal Strategy at Equinix Metal

On Wednesday, LF Edge published their 2021 edition of the State of the Edge Report.  As a co-chair and researcher for the report, I want to share insight into how this year’s report was created. In development, we focused on three key questions to ensure the report covered essential subject matter:

  • What’s new in edge computing since last year?
  • What are the challenges and opportunities facing the ecosystem?
  • How can we help?

Designed to be “vendor neutral” and to shy away from any bias, we had multiple authors contribute content and utilized an independent editor to balance the report to better serve the edge computing community. Several experts weighed in on what they were paying attention to in the edge space and identified four major stand-out points:

  • Critical infrastructure (data centers)
  • Hardware and silicon
  • Software as a whole
  • Networks and networking

It’s abundantly clear there is growth in edge computing. Over the last year, COVID-19 accelerated nearly every facet of digital transformation, and this factored into the growth of the edge computing space. But, it also might just be a long overdue increase in digital innovation and transformation.

We will continue to discover more about the edge and how to use it to optimize the computing ecosystem. For now, our attention is focused on how diverse the edge is and all of the solutions that are waiting to be discovered.

Summarized from Equinix Metal’s The State of Your Edge. Read the full story here. Download the report here.   

 

 

March 12, 2021

LF Edge’s State of the Edge 2021 Report Predicts Global Edge Computing Infrastructure Market to be Worth Up to $800 Billion by 2028

By Announcement, LF Edge, State of the Edge
  • COVID-19 highlighted that expertise in legacy data centers could be obsolete in the next few years as the pandemic forced the development of new tools enabled by edge computing for remote monitoring, provisioning, repair and management.
  • Open source hardware and software projects are driving innovation at the edge by accelerating the adoption and deployment of applications for cloud-native, containerized and distributed applications.
  • The LF Edge taxonomy, which offers terminology standardization with a balanced view of the edge landscape, is based on inherent technical and logistical tradeoffs spanning the edge to cloud continuum is gaining widespread industry adoption.
  • Seven out of 10 areas of edge computing experienced growth in 2020 with a number of new use cases that are driven by 5G.

SAN FRANCISCO – March 10, 2020 –  State of the Edge, a project under the LF Edge umbrella organization that established an open, interoperable framework for edge independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced the release of the 4th annual, State of the Edge 2021 Report. The market and ecosystem report for edge computing shares insight and predictions on how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the status quo, how new types of critical infrastructure have emerged to service the next-level requirements, and open source collaboration as the only way to efficiently scale Edge Infrastructure.

Tolaga Research, which led the market forecasting research for this report, predicts that between 2019 and 2028, cumulative capital expenditures of up to $800 billion USD will be spent on new and replacement IT server equipment and edge computing facilities. These expenditures will be relatively evenly split between equipment for the device and infrastructure edges.

“Our 2021 analysis shows demand for edge infrastructure accelerating in a post COVID-19 world,” said Matt Trifiro, co-chair of State of the Edge and CMO of edge infrastructure company Vapor IO. “We’ve been observing this trend unfold in real-time as companies re-prioritize their digital transformation efforts to account for a more distributed workforce and a heightened need for automation. The new digital norms created in response to the pandemic will be permanent. This will intensify the deployment of new technologies like wireless 5G and autonomous vehicles, but will also impact nearly every sector of the economy, from industrial manufacturing to healthcare.”

The pandemic is accelerating digital transformation and service adoption.

Government lockdowns, social distancing and fragile supply chains had both consumers and enterprises using digital solutions last year that will permanently change the use cases across the spectrum. Expertise in legacy data centers could be obsolete in the next few years as the pandemic has forced the development of tools for remote monitoring, provisioning, repair and management, which will reduce the cost of edge computing. Some of the areas experiencing growth in the Global Infrastructure Edge Power are automotive, smart grid and enterprise technology. As businesses began spending more on edge computing, specific use cases increased including:

  • Manufacturing increased from 3.9 to 6.2 percent, as companies bolster their supply chain and inventory management capabilities and capitalize on automation technologies and autonomous systems.
  • Healthcare, which increased from 6.8 to 8.6 percent, was buoyed by increased expectations for remote healthcare, digital data management and assisted living.
  • Smart cities increased from 5.0 to 6.1 percent in anticipation of increased expenditures in digital infrastructure in the areas such as surveillance, public safety, city services and autonomous systems.

“In our individual lock-down environments, each of us is an edge node of the Internet and all our computing is, mostly, edge computing,” said Wenjing Chu, senior director of Open Source and Research at Futurewei Technologies, Inc. and LF Edge Governing Board member. “The edge is the center of everything.”

Open Source is driving innovation at the edge by accelerating the adoption and deployment of edge applications.

Open Source has always been the foundation of innovation and this became more prevalent during the pandemic as individuals continued to turn to these communities for normalcy and collaboration. LF Edge, which hosts nine projects including State of the Edge, is an important driver of standards for the telecommunications, cloud and IoT edge. Each project collaborates individually and together to create an open infrastructure that creates an ecosystem of support. LF Edge’s projects (Akraino Edge Stack, Baetyl, EdgeX Foundry, Fledge, Home Edge, Open Horizon, Project EVE, and Secure Device Onboard) support emerging edge applications across areas such as non-traditional video and connected things that require lower latency, and  faster processing and mobility.

“State of the Edge is shaping the future of all facets of just edge computing and the ecosystem that surrounds it,” said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager of Networking, IoT and Edge. “The insights in the report reflect the entire LF Edge community and our mission to unify edge computing and support a more robust solution at the IoT, Enterprise, Cloud and Telco edge. We look forward to sharing the ongoing work State of the Edge that amplifies innovations across the entire landscape.”

Other report highlights and methodology

For the report, researchers modeled the growth of edge infrastructure from the bottom up, starting with the sector-by-sector use cases likely to drive demand. The forecast considers 43 use cases spanning 11 verticals in calculating the growth, including those represented by smart grids, telecom, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, automotive and mobile consumer services. The vendor-neutral report was edited by Charlie Ashton, Senior Director of Business Development at Napatech, with contributions from Phil Marshall, Chief Research officer at Tolaga Research; Phil Shih, Founder and Managing Director of Structure Research; Technology Journalists Mary Branscombe and Simon Bisson; and Fay Arjomandi, Founder and CEO of mimik. Other highlights from the State of the Edge 2021 Report include:

  • Off-the-shelf services and applications are emerging that accelerate and de-risk the rapid deployment of edge in these segments. The variety of emerging use cases is in turn driving a diversity in edge-focused processor platforms, which now include Arm-based solutions, SmartNICs with FPGA-based workload acceleration and GPUs.
  • Edge facilities will also create new types of interconnection. Similar to how data centers became meeting points for networks, the micro data centers at wireless towers and cable headends that will power edge computing often sit at the crossroads of terrestrial connectivity paths. These locations will become centers of gravity for local interconnection and edge exchange, creating new and newly efficient paths for data.
  • 5G, next-generation SD-WAN and SASE have been standardized. They are well suited to address the multitude of edge computing use cases that are being adopted and are contemplated for the future. As digital services proliferate and drive demand for edge computing, the diversity of network performance requirements will continue to increase.

“The State of the Edge report is an important industry and community resource. This year’s report features the analysis of diverse experts, mirroring the collaborative approach that we see thriving in the edge computing ecosystem,” said Jacob Smith, co-chair of State of the Edge and Vice President of Bare Metal at Equinix. “The 2020 findings underscore the tremendous acceleration of digital transformation efforts in response to the pandemic, and the critical interplay of hardware, software and networks for servicing use cases at the edge.”

Download the report here.

State of the Edge Co-Chairs Matt Trifiro and Jacob Smith, VP Bare Metal Strategy & Marketing of Equinix, will present highlights from the report in a keynote presentation at Open Networking & Edge Executive Forum, a virtual conference on March 10-12. Register here ($50 US) to watch the live presentation on March 12 at 7 am PT or access the video on-demand.

Trifiro and Smith will also host an LF Edge webinar to showcase the key findings on March 18 at 8 am PT. Register here.

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.

# # #

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.

March 10, 2021

Scaling Ecosystems Through an Open Edge (Part Three)

By Blog, LF Edge, Project EVE, Trend

Getting to “Advanced Class”, Including Focusing on Compounding Value with the Right Partners

By Jason Shepherd, LF Edge Governing Board Chair and VP of Ecosystem at ZEDEDA

 

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This blog originally ran on the ZEDEDA Medium blog. Click here for more content like this.

Thanks for continuing to read this series on ecosystem development and the importance of an open edge for scaling to the true potential of digital transformation — interconnected ecosystems that drive new business models and customer outcomes. In parts one and two, I talked about various ecosystem approaches spanning open and closed philosophies, the new product mindset related to thinking about the cumulative lifetime value of an offer, and the importance of the network effect and various considerations for building ecosystems. This includes the dynamics across both technology choices and between people.

In this final installment I’ll dive into how we get to “advanced class,” including the importance of domain knowledge and thinking about cumulative value add vs. solutions looking for problems that can be solved in other, albeit brute force, ways.

Getting to advanced class

I talked about the importance of compounding value in part one of this series and will touch on this concept a little more here, in addition to the criticality of domain knowledge. Speaking of the later, hundreds of IoT platform providers claim they can do a use case like Predictive Maintenance (PdM) but few actually have the domain knowledge to do it. A PdM solution not only requires analytics tools and data science but also an intimate knowledge of failure patterns based on various attributes (vibration, oil particulates, temperature, motor current, etc.). Often an operator on a factory floor that has “been there done that” sits alongside a data scientist to help program the analytics algorithms based on his/her tribal knowledge. A former colleague once worked on a PdM solution with a line operator named Brad, who was the expert that helped the data scientist understand what machine and process behaviors were non-issues, despite looking like bad news, and vice versa. They jokingly called the end result “Bradalytics”.

Further, there’s a certain naivety in the industry today in terms of pushing IoT solutions when there’s already established “good enough” precedent. In the case of PdM, manual data acquisition with a handheld vibration meter once a month or so is a common practice to accurately predict impending machine failures because these failures don’t typically happen overnight. An industrial operator can justify this manual data collection as OpEx and the only thing permanently installed on their machines are brass pads that indicate where to apply the contact-based handheld sensor, from which data is manually loaded into an analytical tool.

Similar manual procedures are all too common in other industries, such as USB data loggers used to monitor temperature in cold chain logistics operations. In another example, structural engineers have historically used the practice of attaching an expensive sensor package to monitor the structural integrity of a bridge or building for a few weeks, only to then move this equipment on to the next piece of infrastructure.

The promise of IoT is that this instrumentation is becoming so inexpensive that it can be deployed permanently everywhere for acquiring real-time data from the physical world; however, the value of deploying this infrastructure still must be greater than the cost of deploying and maintaining it through its full lifecycle in addition to the associated risk in terms of maintaining security and privacy.

Don’t get me wrong — PdM enabled by IoT is a valuable use case — despite machines typically failing over a long period of time it’s expensive to roll a truck to do repairs, especially if an industrial process experiences a loss of production. For example, downtime in a major jetliner factory can be upwards of $20k a minute! It’s just important to think about the big picture and whether you’re trying to solve a problem that has already been solved.

Looking at the bigger picture, a supply chain linked to a manufacturing process is a great example of an ecosystem that easily justifies an IoT solution for real-time monitoring and analytics. In a multi-stage manufacturing operation, the cost of discovering a flaw within a given part increases steadily with each process stage. The cost is even higher if that part gets into the supply chain and it’s higher yet if a defective product gets to a customer, not to mention impacting the manufacturer’s brand. Here the cumulative value of instrumenting throughout the product lifecycle is very high and definitely warrants a solution that can report issues the moment they occur.

Speaking of the holistic value that I touched on in part one and above, the real potential is not just the remote monitoring of a single machine, rather a whole fleet of interconnected machines. Imagine a world where you can send a tech out with work instructions to preventatively repair a fleet of machines in order to get the most out of a truck roll to a given location. This is similar to the story of “Fred and Phil” in part one, in which Phil wanted the propane tanks to be bone dry before rolling a truck. And on top of that — imagine that the algorithm could tell you that it will cost you less money in the long run to replace a specific machine altogether, rather than trying to repair it yet again.

It goes beyond IoT and AI, last I checked, systems ranging from machines to factory floors and vehicles are composed of subsystems from various suppliers. As such, open interoperability is also critical when it comes to Digital Twins. I think this is a great topic for another blog!

Sharpening the edge

In my recent Edge AI blog I highlighted the new LF Edge taxonomy white paper and how we think this taxonomy will help put an end to the current market confusion caused by various industries (cloud, telco, IT, OT/industrial, consumer) defining the edge with a strong bias towards their interests/PoV, not to mention taxonomies that use ambiguous terms such as “thin and thick” and “near and far” that mean different things to different people. The team at ZEDEDA had a heavy hand in shaping this with the LF Edge community. In fact, a lot of the core thinking stems from my “Getting a Deeper Edge on the Edge” blog from last year.

As highlighted in the paper, the IoT component of the Smart Device Edge (e.g., compared to client devices like smartphones, PCs, etc. that also live at this sub-category) spans a single node with 256MB of memory up to a small server cluster, deployed outside of a physically-secure data center or Modular Data Center (MDC). The upper end of this spectrum is increasingly blurring into the Kubernetes paradigm thanks to efforts like K3S. However, due to resource constraints and other factors these nodes will not have the exact same functionality as higher edge tiers leveraging full-blown Kubernetes.

Below the Smart Device Edge is the “Constrained Device Edge”. This sub-tier consists of a highly fragmented landscape of microcontroller-based devices that typically have their own custom OTA tools. Efforts like Microsoft’s Sphere OS are trying to address this space and it’s important to band together on efforts like this due to the immense fragmentation at this tier.

Ultimately it’s important to think of the edge to cloud as a continuum and that there isn’t an “industrial edge” vs. an “enterprise edge” and a “consumer edge” as some would contend. Rather, it’s about building an ecosystem of technology and services providers that create necessarily unique value-add on top of more consistent infrastructure while taking into account the necessary tradeoff across the continuum.

We build the guts so you can bring the glory

You can think of ZEDEDA’s SaaS-based orchestration solution as being like VMware Tanzu in principle (in the sense that we support both VMs and containers) but optimized for IoT-centric edge compute hardware and workloads at the “Smart Device Edge” as defined by the LF Edge taxonomy. We’re not trying to compete with great companies like VMware and Nutanix who shine at the On-prem Data Center Edge up through the Service Provider Edge and into centralized data centers in the cloud. In fact, we can help industry leaders like these, telcos and cloud service providers extend their offerings including managed services down into the lighter compute edges.

Our solution is based on the open source Project EVE within LF Edge which provides developers with maximum flexibility for evolving their ecosystem strategy with their choice of technologies and partners, regardless of whether they ultimately choose to take an open or more closed approach. EVE aims to do for IoT what Android did for the mobile component of the Smart Device Edge by simplifying the orchestration of IoT edge computing at scale, regardless of applications, hardware or cloud used.

The open EVE orchestration APIs also provide an insurance policy in terms of developers and end users not being locked into only our commercial cloud-based orchestrator. Meanwhile, it’s not easy to build this kind of controller for scale, and ours places special emphasis on ease of use in addition to security. It can be leveraged as-is by end users, or white-labeled by solution OEMs to orchestrate their own branded offers and related ecosystems. In all cases, the ZEDEDA cloud is not in the data path so all permutations of edge data sources flowing to any on-premises or cloud-based system are supported across a mix of providers.

As I like to say, we build the guts so our partners and customers can bring the glory!

In closing

I’ll close with a highlight of the classic Clayton Christiansen book Innovator’s Dilemma. In my role I talk with a lot of technology providers and end users, and I often see people stuck in this pattern, thinking “I’ll turn things around if I can just do what I’ve always done better”. This goes not just for large incumbents but also fairly young startups!

One interaction in particular that has stuck with me over the years was a IoT strategy discussion with a large credit card payments provider. They were clearly trapped in the Innovator’s Dilemma, wondering what to do about the mobile payment players like Square that had really disrupted their market. As they were talking about how they didn’t want another Square situation to happen again, I asked them “have you thought about when machines start making payments?”. The fact that this blew their minds is exactly why another Square is going to happen to them, if they don’t get outside of their own headspace.

When approaching digital transformation and ecosystem development it’s often best to start small, however equally important is to think holistically for the long term. This includes building on an open foundation that you can grow with and that enables you to focus your investments on business relationships and innovation rather than reinvention. Sure, you may be able to build your own orchestration solution like we have at ZEDEDA, or your own full turn-key stack, but if you do either in a proprietary silo then you’ve just locked yourself out of the biggest potential — creating a network effect across various markets through increasingly interconnected ecosystems! Again, imagine if the internet was owned by one company.

We invite you to get involved with Project EVE, and more broadly-speaking LF Edge as we jointly build out this foundation. You’re of course free to build your own controller with EVE’s open APIs, or reach out to us here at ZEDEDA and we can help you orchestrate your commercial IoT edge ecosystem. We’re here to help you start small and scale big and have a growing entourage of technology and service partners to drive outcomes for your business.

March 9, 2021

Open Horizon Moves to Stage 2!

By Blog, LF Edge, Open Horizon

Written by Joe Pearson, Open Horizon Chair of the Technical Steering Committee and Edge Computing and Technology Strategist at IBM

On Thursday, March 4, 2021 the Open Horizon open source project was officially promoted to stage two maturity.  This was the culmination of a process that began on January 27, when I presented the proposal to the LF Edge Technical Advisory Committee (TAC).

Introduction

The Open Horizon software project was seeded by a contribution from IBM to the Linux Foundation in April 2020.  The project’s mission: to develop open-source software that manages the service software lifecycle of containerized applications on edge compute nodes.  Since that initial code contribution, the project and community has grown as it has attracted new project partners and contributors.

About Stage Two

Reaching stage two is a significant milestone for open-source software projects because it is a strong indicator of both the organization’s healthy growth, and potential stakeholder interest in using the software as a solution for specific use cases.  In the LF Edge umbrella organization, projects have to meet the following criteria to achieve stage two:

  • Past community participation met previous growth plans
  • An ongoing flow of merged code commits and other contributions
  • Documented proofs of concept using the software
  • Collaboration with other LF Edge projects
  • Growth plan, including projected feature sets and community targets

Getting Started

Since the project began last spring, it formed a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) and began hosting public meetings last July.  The TSC then authorized the creation of seven Working Groups which are responsible for overseeing the daily work of the project.  Then a Special Interest Group (SIG) proposal was presented for the formation of a group to promote manufacturing and Industry 4.0 use cases last August, which was approved.

Growing the Community

The project has also been actively involved in reaching out to students and universities.  Thanks to funding from the Linux Foundation and Intel, the LFX Mentorship program was able to provide stipends for mentees who complete a term with Linux Foundation projects.  Open Horizon joined the LFX program and was able to mentor four students and early career persons from October to December 2020.  This mentorship program continues, and Open Horizon has just begun the Spring 2021 term with four new mentees.

Using the Platform

Last year, IBM created a commercially supported distribution of Open Horizon that was named IBM Edge Application Manager (IEAM).  We’ve seen Open Horizon, or Open Horizon-based distributions, being used in an autonomous ship, vertical farming solutions, regional climate protection management, shipping ports, and even the International Space Station to deliver applications and related machine learning assets.  And last week HP Inc, Intel, and IBM presented a webinar to invite retailers and vendors to participate in creating an Open Retail Reference Architecture based on the EdgeX Foundry, Open Horizon, and SDO projects.

Creating an Open Edge Computing Framework

The LF Edge organization provides a structure to support open edge computing projects.  This should allow those projects to collectively form a framework for edge computing if they support common standards and interoperability.  The Open Horizon project is working to further that goal by both working with other LF Edge projects to create end-to-end edge computing solutions when combined, but also to support existing open standards and to create new standards where none exist today.  An example of supporting existing standards is in the area of zero-touch device provisioning where Open Horizon incorporates SDO services, a reference implementation for the FIDO IoT v1 specification.

Join Us

Now that Open Horizon has demonstrated its value as a platform and a community, it is preparing to expand the community by adding new SIGs, Partners, and contributors to the project.  To work with the project community to shape application delivery and lifecycle management within edge computing, consider attending one of the Working Group meetings, contributing code, working on standards, or even installing the software.

Additional Resources:

March 5, 2021

Decentralized ID and Access Management (DIAM) for IoT Networks

By Blog, Hyperledger, LF Edge

Written by Nima Afraz, Connect Centre for Future Networks and Communications, Trinity College Dublin

The Telecom Special Interest group in collaboration with the Linux Foundation’s LF Edge initiative has published a solution brief addressing the issues concerning the centralized ID and Access Management (IAM) in IoT Networks and introducing a distributed alternative using Hyperledger Fabric.

The ever-growing number of IoT devices means data vulnerability is an ongoing risk. Existing centralized IoT ecosystems have led to concerns about security, privacy, and data use. This solution brief shows that a decentralized ID and access management (DIAM) system for IoT devices provides the best solution for those concerns, and that Hyperledger offers the best technology for such a system.

The IoT is growing quickly. IDC predicts that by 2025 there will be 55.7 billion connected devices in the world. Scaling and securing a network of billions of IoT devices starts with a robust device. Data security also requires a strong access management framework that can integrate and interoperate with existing legacy systems. Each IoT device should carry a unique global identifier and have a profile that governs access to the device.

In this solution brief, we propose a decentralized approach to validate and verify the identity of IoT devices, data, and applications. In particular, we propose using two frameworks from the Linux Foundation: Hyperledger Fabric for the distributed ledger (DLT) and Hyperledger Indy for the decentralized device IDs. These two blockchain frameworks provide the core components to address end-to-end IoT device ID and access management (IAM).

The Problem: IoT Data Security

The ambitious IoT use cases including smart transport infer a massive volume of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-road communications that must be safeguarded to prevent malicious activity and malfunctions due to single points of failure.

The Solution: Decentralized Identity

IoT devices collect, handle, and act on data as proxies for a wide range of users, such as a human, a government agency, or a multinational enterprise.With tens of billions of IoT devices to be connected over the next few years, numerous IoT devices may represent a single person or institution in multiple roles. And IoT devices may play roles that no one has yet envisioned.

A decentralized ID management system removes the need for any central governing authority and makes way for new models of trust among organizations. All this provides more transparency, improves communications, and saves costs.

The solution is to use Hyperledger technology to create a trusted platform for a telecom ecosystem that can support IoT devices throughout their entire lifecycle and guarantee a flawless customer experience. The solution brief includes Reference Architecture and a high-level architecture view of the proof of concept (PoC) that IBM is working on with some enterprise clients. This PoC uses Hyperledger Fabric as described above.

Successful Implementations of Hyperledger-based IoT Networks

IBM and its partners have successfully developed several global supply-chain ecosystems using IoT devices, IoT network services, and Hyperledger blockchain software. Two examples of these implementations are Food Trust and TradeLens.

The full paper is available to read at: https://www.hyperledger.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/HL_LFEdge_WhitePaper_021121_3.pdf

Get Involved with the Group

To learn more about the Hyperledger Telecom Special Interest Group, check out the group’s wiki and mailing list. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, feel free to post messages to the list.  And you’re welcome to join any of the group’s upcoming calls to meet group members and learn how to get involved.

Acknowledgements

The Hyperledger Telecom Special Interest Group would like to thank the following people who contributed to this solution brief: Nima Afraz, David Boswell, Bret Michael Carpenter, Vinay Chaudhary, Dharmen Dhulla, Charlene Fu, Gordon Graham, Saurabh Malviya, Lam Duc Nguyen, Ahmad Sghaier Omar, Vipin Rathi, Bilal Saleh, Amandeep Singh, and Mathews Thomas.

February 25, 2021

Linux Foundation, LF Networking, and LF Edge Announce Speaker Line-up for Open Networking & Edge Executive Forum, March 10-12

By Announcement, Event, LF Edge

Technology leaders, change makers and visionaries from across the global networking & edge communities will gather virtually for this unique, one-of-a-kind executive event focusing on deployment progress, 2021 priorities, challenges and more. 

SAN FRANCISCO, February 25, 2020 — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, along with co-hosts LF Networking, the umbrella organization fostering collaboration and innovation across the entire open networking stack, and LF Edge, the umbrella organization building an open source framework for the edge, announced today the speaker line-up for Open Networking & Edge Executive Forum. The schedule can be viewed here and the speaker details can be viewed here.  

Open Networking & Edge Executive Forum (ONEEF) is a special edition of Open Networking & Edge Summit, the industry’s premier open networking & edge event, gathering senior technologists and executive leaders from enterprises, telecoms and cloud providers for timely discussions on the state of the industry, imminent priorities and insights into Service Provider, Cloud, Enterprise Networking, and Edge/IOT requirements. 

ONEEF will take place virtually, March 10-12. Times vary each day to best accommodate the global audience. Attendees will be able to interact with speakers and attendees directly via chat, schedule 1:1 meetings and more as they participate in this community call to action. 

“ONEEF is a great opportunity for the community to come together virtually after a very hard year,” said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, The Linux Foundation. “We have an impressive line-up of speakers from across a diverse set of global organizations, ready to share their knowledge and passion about what’s next for our burgeoning industry. Hope you can join us!”

Confirmed Keynote Speakers Include:

  • Madeleine Noland, President, Advanced Television Systems Committee
  • Andre Fuetsch, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, AT&T Services, Inc.
  • Steve Mullaney, Chief Executive Officer & President, Aviatrix
  • Jacob Smith, Vice President, Bare Metal Marketing & Strategy, Equinix
  • Dr. Junlan Feng, Chief Scientist & General Manager, China Mobile Research
  • Sun Quiong, SDN Research Center Director, China Telecom Research Institute
  • Dr. Jonathan Smith, Program Manager, Information Innovation Office (I2O), DARPA
  • Tom Arthur, Chief Executive Officer, Dianomic
  • Chris Bainter, Vice President, Global Business Development, FLIR Systems
  • George Nazi, Global Vice President, Telco, Media & Entertainment Industry Solutions Lead, Google Cloud
  • Amol Phadke, Managing Director: Global Telecom Industry Solutions, Google Cloud
  • Shawn Zandi, Head of Network Engineering, LinkedIn
  • Tareq Amin, Group Chief Technology Officer, Rakuten
  • Johan Krebbers, IT Chief Technology Officer & Vice President, TaCIT Architecture, Shell
  • Pablo Espinosa, Vice President, Network Engineering, Target
  • Manish Mangal, Chief Technology Officer, Network Services, Tech Mahindra
  • Matt Trifiro, Chief Marketing Officer, Vapor IO
  • Subha Tatavarti, Sr. Director Technology Commercialization, Walmart
  • Said Ouissal, Founder & CEO, ZEDEDA

Registration for the virtual event is open and is just US$50. Members of The Linux Foundation, LF Networking and LF Edge can attend for free – members can contact us to request a member discount code. The Linux Foundation provides diversity and need-based registration scholarships for this event to anyone that needs it; for information on eligibility and to apply, click here. Visit our website and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for all the latest event updates and announcements.

Members of the press who would like to request a media pass should contact Jill Lovato.

ONEEF sponsorship opportunities are available through Tuesday, March 2. All packages include a keynote speaking opportunity, prominent branding, event passes and more. View the sponsorship prospectus here or email us to learn more.  

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 industry 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 Events are where the world’s leading technologists meet, collaborate, learn and network in order to advance innovations that support the world’s largest shared technologies.

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.

February 25, 2021

LF Edge Member Spotlight: Red Hat

By Blog, LF Edge, Member Spotlight

The LF Edge community is comprised of a diverse set of member companies and people that represent the IoT, Enterprise, Cloud and Telco Edge. The Member Spotlight blog series highlights these members and how they are contributing to and leveraging open source edge solutions. Today, we sit down with Lisa Caywood, Principal Community Architect at Red Hat, to discuss the their history in open source, participation in Akraino and the Kubernetes-Native Infrastructure (KNI) Blueprint Family, and the benefits of being a part of the LF Edge ecosystem.

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. We help you standardize across environments, develop cloud-native applications, and integrate, automate, secure, and manage complex environments with award-winning support, training, and consulting services.

Why is your organization adopting an open-source approach?

Open Source has always been at the core of Red Hat’s core values. As the largest open source company in the world, we believe using an open development model helps create more stable, secure, and innovative technologies.  We’ve spent more than two decades collaborating on community projects and protecting open source licenses so we can continue to develop software that pushes the boundaries of technological ability. For more about our open source commitment or background, visit https://www.redhat.com/en/about/open-source.

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

The network edge is the focus of intensive reinvention and investment in the telco industry and beyond. With a wide array of use cases, and equally wide array of technology options for enabling them, supporting adoption of many new technologies and approaches requires having a common forum for working out design and operations guidelines as well as common approaches to interoperability. IoT requirements aren’t strongly featured at the moment, but we foresee opportunities to focus here in the future. In all of the above cases we strongly believe that the market is seeking open source solutions, and the LF Edge umbrella is a key to fostering many of these projects.

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

  • Forum for engaging productively with other members of the Edge ecosystem on interoperability concerns
  • Brings together work done in other Edge-related groups in an framework focused on implementation

What sort of contributions has your team made to the community, ecosystem through LF Edge participation?

We have primarily participated in the development of Akraino Blueprints such as the Kubernetes-Native Infrastructure (KNI) Blueprint Family. Specifcially, the KNI Provider Access Edge Blueprint, which leverages the best-practices and tools from the Kubernetes community to declaratively manage edge computing stacks at scale and with a consistent, uniform user experience from the infrastructure up to the services and from developer environments to production environments on bare metal or on public cloud, and the KNI Industrial Edge Blueprint. We are also active on the LF Edge Governing Board and other committees that help form and guide the project.

What do you think sets LF Edge apart from other industry alliances?

Close interaction with LF Networking and CNCF communities.

How will LF Edge help your business?

Red Hat’s partners and customers are strongly heading towards areas in RAN and other workload virtualization and containerization, 4g/5g, Edge, MEC and other variations on those areas. The Linux Foundation Edge’s umbrella is one of the premier places for organizations focusing on creating open source solutions in these areas to converge.

What advice would you give to someone considering joining LF Edge?

As with any open source engagement, prospective members should have clear, concrete and well-documented objectives they wish to achieve as a result of their engagement. These may include elaboration of specific technical capabilities, having a structured engagement strategy with certain key partners, or exploration of a new approach to emerging challenges. Take advantage of onboarding support provided by LF staff and senior contributors in your projects of interest.

To find out more about LF Edge members or how to join, click here.

To learn more about Akraino, click here. Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the LF Edge Slack Channel and share your thoughts in the #akraino, #akraino-help, #akraino-tsc and #akraino-blueprints channels.

February 23, 2021

Over the Edge Podcast with LF Edge Members

By Blog, LF Edge, Member Spotlight, State of the Edge

Edge computing represents a long-term transformation of the Internet that could take decades to fully materialize. On the Over the Edge podcast, Ian Faison and LF Edge member Matt Trifiro interview corporate leaders, open-source experts, technologists, journalists, analysts, and innovators pushing the boundaries of edge. Since launch earlier this year, the podcast has featured several LF Edge members and contributors who are changing the landscape. As we look back at 2020, here’s a podcast roundup of what these leaders had to say about edge computing.

Edge computing is an inflection point – Matt Trifiro, CMO of Vapor IO and Chair of State of the Edge

Bringing the world of software into the world of physical networks – Jacob Smith, Co-Founder of Packet and Chair of State of the Edge

Bringing the edge to emerging markets – Joe Zhu, CEO of Zenlayer and Akraino contributor

How open source is expanding the horizon for IoT and edge – Malini Bhandaru, IoT Open Source Lead at VMware and Co-Chair of the EdgeX Foundry Security Working Group

Open source collaboration is the only way to scale – Jason Shepherd, VP of Ecosystem at ZEDEDA and LF Edge Governing Board member and one of the leaders of Project EVE

A 30,000-foot view of edge – Gavin Whitechurch, Co-Founder of Edge Computing World/COO of Topio Networks and State of the Edge contributor

How standards drive adoption and enable the intelligent edge – Alex Reznik, Distinguished Technologist at HPE and Chair of ETSI MEC and Akraino contributor

Building the easy button for edge – Cole Crawford, CEO and Founder of Vapor IO and one of the leaders of State of the Edge

The future of IoT deployment at the edge – Sarah Beaudoin, Head of Customer Advocacy at ZEDEDA and Project EVE contributor

The cloud that will power and scale the new internet – Mahdi Yahya, CEO and Founder of Ori Industries and Akraino contributor

Redefining networking to empower edge innovation– David Hart, CTO and Co-Founder of NetFoundry and EdgeX Foundry contributor

CBRS, Shared Spectrum, and the democratization of wireless access – Iyad Tarazi, President, CEO and Co-Founder of Federated Wireless and Akraino contributor

Additional podcast episodes can be found here. If you want to be featured in the Over the Edge podcast, let us know!

 

December 30, 2020

LF Edge Member Spotlight: Equinix

By Blog, LF Edge, Member Spotlight

The LF Edge community is comprised of a diverse set of member companies and people that represent the IoT, Enterprise, Cloud and Telco Edge. The Member Spotlight blog series highlights these members and how they are contributing to and leveraging open source edge solutions. Today, we sit down with Justin Dustzadeh, Chief Technology Officer at Equinix, to discuss the importance of open source, collaborating with industry leaders in edge computing, their leadership of the Akraino Public Cloud Edge Interface (PCEI) Blueprint and the impact of being a part of the LF Edge ecosystem.

 

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

Equinix is a digital infrastructure company. We offer the world’s largest platform of high-quality data centers, including reliable interconnection to ecosystems of enterprises, clouds, networks and IT providers. With our global footprint of 220+ data centers in 26 countries, we currently serve nearly 10,000 customers, including the largest cloud providers, Fortune 500 enterprises and Global 2000 companies. Platform Equinix contains the highest share of public cloud on-ramps and most physically- and virtually-interconnected ecosystems.

Why is your organization adopting an open-source approach?

Consistent with our software-defined-everything vision, we believe in a software-first approach and the vital role of software in enabling the vision of digital transformation as a service. We believe in innovation through collaboration, and the power of the developer community and open-source ecosystems where participants can collaborate to develop software and improve it together.

We have significantly increased our engagements in the developer community and open-source ecosystems, including within the Linux Foundation where we have various technical and leadership roles and are actively engaged to help drive and contribute to a few key projects where we believe we can add value. Our participation within the Linux Foundation includes a Premier (top-level) membership with LF Edge, a Silver (standard-level) membership with LF Networking and a Gold (2nd-top-level) membership with Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

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

The charter of LF Edge, focusing on establishing an open, interoperable framework for edge computing is well aligned with our vision of the edge. We believe that the edge will be richly-interconnected, with required capabilities for multi-domain, edge-to-multicloud orchestration, potentially spanning devices, access and aggregation networks, interconnected data centers and core clouds.

The diversity of edge use cases, such as IoT, distributed AI, private 5G, radio edge cloud (to name a few), and the corresponding technology and architecture requirements, reinforces the notion that edge will be everywhere and will evolve into an increasingly-complex ecosystem. We strongly believe that a community approach to help define a set of real-world edge use cases and capabilities integrated as blueprints, implemented with modern software stacks and cloud-native technologies, will accelerate the deployment of edge solutions with minimum friction, benefitting users and customers.

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

We see a great synergy between the neutral role of Equinix, as the trusted global platform for reliable, highly-distributed and interconnected edge infrastructure, and the rich ecosystem of hardware, software, connectivity, content and cloud players required to enable various edge use cases. LF Edge is a forum where we can collaborate with many of these players in an open environment and co-develop edge solutions that can benefit from leveraging our infrastructure capabilities in service to the LF Edge community members and our customers.

What sort of contributions has your team made to the community, ecosystem through LF Edge participation?

Equinix has been actively engaged within the LF Edge Akraino community, serving as co-chair of the technical steering committee (TSC) and as project technical lead (PTL) for the Public Cloud Edge Interface (PCEI) Blueprint. Our contributions in the PCEI blueprint include: (i) the definition of the multi-domain architecture for interworking between mobile edge, public cloud core and edge, and 3rd-party edge applications/functions, as well as the underlying infrastructure such as data centers, compute hardware and networks, and (ii) the development of PCEI blueprint implementation for Akraino Release 4 demonstrating the use of edge multi-cloud orchestrator (EMCO, based on ONAP) for onboarding and deployment of cloud-native public cloud edge (PCE) applications from Azure IoT Edge and AWS IoT Greengrass Core on edge compute Kubernetes clusters to show end-to-end low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT operation using 4G access and virtual evolved packet core (vEPC). We are contributing our lab infrastructure and interconnection resources and have been working closely with Microsoft, Aarna Networks, Intel, Arm, China Mobile and Verizon on integrating and demonstrating the initial PCEI blueprint.

What do you think sets LF Edge apart from other industry alliances?

LF Edge/Akraino is involved in a very diverse set of blueprints targeting enterprises, telcos and clouds while also interworking with other organizations and communities, such as ORAN, 3GPP, CNCF, LF Networking, TIP, ETSI and MEF. There are today over 30 active blueprint projects in Akraino. The breadth and depth of these use cases are unique in the industry, but the most important point is that these blueprints are not built in a vacuum – they align and make use of the upstream code and standards, showing running deployments where these architectures and interfaces are implemented.

How will LF Edge help your business?

We think that the LF Edge community will find it beneficial to make use of Equinix infrastructure and services that can help support edge deployments and applications. These capabilities include our data centers, interconnection fabric providing access to many networks, clouds and customers, bare metal hardware and orchestration and our virtualized network functions.

What advice would you give to someone considering joining LF Edge?

First and foremost, we believe it’s important to be aligned with the vision and charter of LF edge and have a good understanding of the various projects in order to effectively engage with the community and be prepared to contribute, e.g., by providing code or development resources, or integration/lab resources. One of the most remarkable aspects about LF Edge is the level of commitment, dedication and professionalism of the individuals who make up our community. The work being done on creating and demonstrating the blueprints is mainly on a volunteer basis, in addition to our primary jobs. We believe it’s this type of collaborative efforts (which take long hours, patience and trust) that will continue to drive technology innovation for edge computing for the years to come.

To find out more about LF Edge members or how to join, click here.

To learn more about Akraino, click here. Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the LF Edge Slack Channel and share your thoughts in the #akraino, #akraino-help, #akraino-tsc and #akraino-blueprints channels.

December 17, 2020
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