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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

LF Edge Member Spotlight: Equinix Metal

By Blog, Member Spotlight, State of the Edge

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 Jacob Smith, Vice President of Bare Metal Marketing & Strategy for Equinix Metal, to discuss the their activities in open source, collaborating with industry leaders in edge computing, their leadership State of the Edge, and the impact of being a part of the LF Edge ecosystem.

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

Equinix Metal is the leading provider of globally available, automated bare metal. Formed through the acquisition of Packet by Equinix in 2020, we focus on operating foundational, interconnected infrastructure that is proximate to the world’s major networks, clouds and enterprises.

Why is your organization adopting an open-source approach?

Our vision is to help make infrastructure a competitive advantage for today’s digital leaders. Open source is a key part of that strategy, providing a clear way for us to invest in “making the tent bigger.”  In our view, the more people and companies that innovate with digital infrastructure, the better.

In addition to our participation in LF Edge (especially the State of the Edge report), Equinix Metal is a leading member (and user) of the Open19 project. Last year, we also open sourced our core bare metal provisioning technology (Tinkerbell), which was accepted into the CNCF as a sandbox project. This continues our long support of the cloud native community, including a $1M annual infrastructure donation to support the Community Infrastructure Lab.

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 joined LF Edge at its founding due to our interest in edge computing use cases and our respect for the Linux Foundation’s ability to bring diverse stakeholders together. In addition to its leading projects, the LF Edge community invites and enables the kind of diversity in the edge ecosystem that is critical to its success.

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

One of the most important benefits is access to a growing group of companies that are serious about the edge. Interacting at the committee level allows us to connect with leaders throughout the field who are building truly interesting technologies and solutions to solve real problems.

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

The Equinix Metal team has focused its efforts on the State of the Edge project, which was co-founded with VaporIO and contributed to the LF Edge. This has been an exciting effort, downloaded by thousands of community members annually. I am also co-chair of the State of the Edge report.

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

Strong governance helps to ensure that a variety of voices and projects can gain influence, and this is a unique strength of the open-source community.

How will LF Edge help your business?

LF Edge provides a steady touchpoint in a fast-changing ecosystem. Now that we’re part of a large company and travel is restricted; it is easy to lose touch with the pulse of the industry.  LF Edge helps to keep us in touch.

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

Jump in and join a committee or raise your hand to help lead an effort. This is the best way — outside of contributing code — to drive our community forward while quickly forming the relationships that matter.

 

January 28, 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

LF Edge Member Spotlight: OSIsoft

By Blog, Fledge, 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 Daniel Lazaro, Senior Technical Program Manager at OSIsoft, to discuss the importance of open source, collaborating with industry leaders in edge computing, their contributions to Fledge and the impact of being a part of the LF Edge ecosystem.

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

Since 1980, OSIsoft has focused on a single goal: getting operations data into the hands of industrial professionals so that they have the information they need to reduce costs, increase productivity and transform business. Decades ago, before the modern internet, big data, or AI arrived on the scene, the company’s flagship PI System software became known for breaking ground as a historian: a database used by engineers in an operational environment that captures streaming, time-series data that reflects the state of the physical equipment (assets).

Over time, the PI System has expanded to meet modern industrial needs, allowing not only operations staff but also executives, software developers, data scientists and others to understand, share, and make decisions based on highly curated operations data. With its addition of edge and cloud-based capabilities, the PI System now makes this essential data accessible, usable and valuable to people, systems and communities of customers, suppliers and partners across and beyond the enterprise.

Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?

Open source enables collaboration and integration of heterogeneous technologies across organizational boundaries. Moreover, it provides a platform for innovation to create solutions designed to address technical and business challenges such as those at the edge. Our CEO and founder Pat Kennedy saw the opportunity for an open source approach to address such challenges at the edge and started Dianomic. We believe that open source is the fast track to innovation. Industrial systems are unique in the number of protocols, data mappings and overall diversity. Open source can uniquely address these edge computing challenges by collaborating on code that all participants can access, modify and expand upon.

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

Zededa introduced Dianomic to LF Edge before its inception. As a result, Dianomic and OSIsoft joined as founding members. The original idea was and remains to build a thriving open source industrial community. This is a challenge to the Linux Foundation in that industrial companies have not been traditional open source users. The operations (OT) side of the Industrial market tends not to be software/compute experts, they are machine, manufacturing and process experts.

LF Edge curates several open source projects and a community around them that addresses the challenges of edge computing in a wide range of vertical markets at the edge of the network. This framework provides a collaboration platform for organizations to build non-differentiating infrastructure for solutions at the edge driven by inherent tradeoffs between the benefits of centralization and decentralization.

LF Edge plays a critical role helping accelerate deployments of Industrial IoT enabling and expanding visibility of previously untapped aspects of operations.

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

In the LF Edge community, we see a group of like-minded organizations willing to work together. By collaborating through open source, we join forces to build the framework and ecosystem for the future of edge computing. Each project targets different pieces of the puzzle or building blocks to assemble in order to address the complexities encountered at the edge. Divide and conquer, focus, specialize and thrive. The community ecosystem provides learning and growing opportunities and a better together experience. At the same time, it enables exciting new revenue opportunities for new types of services and customers.

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

As a Premier member of LF Edge, OSIsoft actively influences the strategic and technical direction of LF Edge as voting members of the Governing Board and technical advisory council. OSIsoft brings its industrial perspective and expertise to LF Edge and contributes its vision working with different committees and through public speaking at various LF Edge related events. Our contributions play an important role in nurturing and growing a community of end users across various industry verticals within LF Edge. The end user vertical solution group kicked off October, 2020 with presentations by industrial companies showcasing valuable use cases implementing solutions using LF Edge projects.

We believe that the industrial edge has a different set of requirements that are better addressed with a specialized approach tailored to its specific needs, namely Fledge. The thriving and growing Fledge community of industrials has contributed back code to the project already deployed in production environments today. This adds to the previous contributions by service providers, system integrators, OEMs such as Dianomic, OSIsoft and Google to name a few. Fledge started when Dianomic contributed the entire FogLAMP stack in winter of 2019. At that time, the code was in its 8th release and had been commercially deployed in energy, manufacturing and mining operations.

Fledge works closely with other LF Edge projects such as EVE and Akraino. EVE provides system and orchestration services and a container runtime for Fledge applications and services. Together industrial operators can build, manage, secure and support both Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and non-SCADA connected machines, IIoT and sensors as they scale. Fledge is also integrated with Akraino, as both projects support the roll out 5G and private LTE networks.

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

Traditionally, alliances have focused on delivering recommendations, guidelines or standards Instead, LF Edge focuses on delivering reference implementations in the form of quality open source software ready for adopters to integrate in their solutions. The strong communities of end users and developers around the software that customize, integrate, implement and contribute back to the projects sets LF Edge apart.

How will LF Edge help your business?

The LF Edge framework lowers the barrier to adoption of edge computing solutions translating in increased industrial implementations that enable new use cases that were not technically possible or cost effective before. This allows OSIsoft customers to rapidly expand their real-time data infrastructure to new systems and devices in industry and operations for greater visibility into operations and business, faster decisions and higher value.

Moreover,  LF Edge enables the expansion to new market opportunities through technical solutions as well as its communities of end users and vertical solutions. LF Edge governance provides customers with confidence that the projects within the framework are developed with broad industry support and openness without vendor lock-in.

Finally, access to a large developer community and marketing efforts are opportunities to share resources and drive down costs.

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

Get familiar with the framework and ecosystem of projects. You can start by checking the website and read the various resources available, white papers and documentation provided by the community. Identify the projects, groups and communities that align with your organization’s goals. Join the relevant groups and communities, mailing lists and calls, listen in and learn and when you are ready participate and contribute. If you identify gaps or have solutions that can enrich the current ecosystem, bring them on. Contributions come in many shapes, not just code, and they are the means to drive direction and influence within LF Edge.

To find out more about LF Edge members or how to join, click here. To learn more about Fledge, click here. To see use cases for Fledge, check out these videos. Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the LF Edge Slack Channel and share your thoughts in the #fledge, #fledge-help or #fledge-tsc channels.

November 19, 2020

LF Edge Member Spotlight: Zenlayer

By Akraino, Akraino Edge Stack, Blog, LF Edge, Member Spotlight

The LF Edge community comprises 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 Jim Xu, Principal Engineer at Zenlayer, to discuss the importance of open source, collaborating with industry leaders in edge computing, their contributions to Akraino and the impact of being a part of the LF Edge ecosystem.

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

Zenlayer is an edge cloud service provider and global company headquartered in Los Angeles, Shanghai, Singapore, and Mumbai. Businesses utilize Zenlayer’s platform to deploy applications closer to the users and improve their digital experience. Zenlayer offers edge compute, software defined networking, and application delivery services in more than 180 locations on six continents.

Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?

Zenlayer has always relied on open source solutions. We strongly believe that open source is the right ecosystem for the edge cloud industry to grow. We connect infrastructure all over the globe. If each data center and platform integrate open-source software, it is much easier to integrate networks and make literal connections compared to a milieu of proprietary systems. Some of the open source projects we benefit from and support are Akraino Blue Prints, ODL, Kubernetes, OpenNess, DPDK, Linux, mySQL, and more.

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 are a startup company in the edge cloud industry. LF Edge is one of the best open-source organizations both advocating for and building open edge platforms. The edge cloud space is developing rapidly, with continuous improvements in cloud technology, edge infrastructure, disaggregated compute, and storage options. Both impact and complexity go far beyond just cloud service providers, device vendors, or even a single traditional industry. LF Edge has helped build a community of people and companies from across industries, advocating for an open climate to make the edge accessible to as many users as possible.

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

Our company has been a member of the LF Edge community for over a year now. Despite the difficulties presented by COVID-19, we have been able to enjoy being part of the Edge community. We interacted with people from a broad spectrum of industries and technology areas and learned some exciting use cases from the LF Edge community. This has helped us build a solid foundation for Zenlayer’s edge cloud services. 

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

We are proud to be part of the Edge Cloud community. Zenlayer is leading the Upstream subcommittee within Akraino and has invited multiple external communities such as ONF CORD,  CNTT, TIP OCN, O-RAN and TARS to share our common interest in building the edge. We also contributed to the upstream requirement and reviews for Akraino releases.

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

LF Edge has a clear focus on edge cloud and a very healthy and strong governing board to ensure unbiased technological drive toward open systems. 

How will LF Edge help your business?

We hope LF Edge will continue to empower rapid customer innovation during the drive to edge cloud for video streaming, gaming, enterprise applications, IoT, and more. As a member of a fast-growing community, we also look forward to more interactions via conferences and social events (digital or in person as is safe) so we can continue to get to know and better understand each other’s needs and how we can help solve them. 

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

LF Edge is a unique community pushing for the best future for edge cloud. The group brings together driven people, a collaborative culture, and fast momentum. What you put in you receive back tenfold. Anyone interested in the future of the edge should consider joining, even if they do not yet know much about open source and its benefits. The community will value their inputs and be happy to teach or collaborate in return.

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 #community or #akraino-tsc channels.

October 28, 2020

LF Edge Member Spotlight: NetFoundry

By Blog, EdgeX Foundry, LF Edge, Member Spotlight

The LF Edge community comprises 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 Jim Clardy, Co-Founder and Global Cloud Partners and Alliances at NetFoundry, to discuss the importance of open source, collaborating with industry leaders in edge computing and the impact of being a part of the LF Edge ecosystem.

Please tell us a little about your organization.

NetFoundry provides the leading zero trust networking platform offered as Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) to connect distributed applications, users, devices and locations through an optimized  global fabric. This enables: solutions and applications, ranging from edge to cloud, to easily embed zero trust networking inside the solution. Developers can embed secure, programmable, private, application-specific networking into their apps, using the open source Ziti software (Ziti.dev) which NetFoundry built and is the leading contributor to.

 

Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?

NetFoundry is built on open source Ziti. The next paradigm in networking is “Networking as code” and zero trust. With open source Ziti SDKs, developers can embed private networking into apps with a few lines of code. Ziti enables a new networking paradigm that greatly reduces the costs and simplifies the complexity of networking and implements zero-trust application embedded connectivity. Ziti is the leading open source platform for creating zero trust network connectivity over the Internet.

Why did you join LF Edge and what sort of impact do you think it has on the industry?

We believe open source communities have the power to shape technologies and markets. In addition to LF Edge, we are members of the Linux Foundation, EdgeX Foundry, and CNCF communities.

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

Accelerating the next paradigm in networking where networking as code and zero trust become ubiquitous. We believe networking will be transformed with cloud-orchestrated interoperability fueled by open source communities like LF Edge.

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

NetFoundry built and is the leading contributor to open source Ziti software, and we are excited to build the open Ziti community. NetFoundry is contributing code to open Ziti regularly.

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

You are able to draw on the Linux Foundation and related ecosystem of communities and contributors – there is a massive and unstoppable network effect created by LF Edge.

How might LF Edge help your business?

Accelerate the development of the Ziti project and community.

 

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

Don’t wait – do it today.

Learn more about NetFoundry here.

Learn more about open Ziti here.

Get started with Ziti on GitHub.

To find out more about our members or how to join LF Edge, click here. Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the  LF Edge Slack to share your thoughts and engage with community members.

 

 

September 24, 2020

LF Edge Member Spotlight: HPE

By Akraino, Akraino Edge Stack, Blog, Member Spotlight

The LF Edge community is represents 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 sat down with Rohit Arora, Enterprise Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to discuss the importance of open source, leading Multi Access Edge Computing (MEC) initiatives, participating in the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and collaborating with the LF Edge ecosystem.

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

HPE is a global, edge-to-cloud Platform-as-a-Service company. HPE solutions connect, protect, analyze, and act on data and applications wherever they live, from edge to cloud, so insights can be turned into outcomes at the speed required to thrive in today’s complex world.

Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?

We at HPE believe in innovation and open source encourages innovation by bringing communities together to build common platform. HPE has been involved in various open source projects.

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 joined LF edge because it aligns with HPE’s direction of edge to cloud. Edge computing is creating a major transformation in most industries and we believe initiatives driven by LF edge are critical for this digital transformation

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

There are many benefits of being part of LF edge but we believe the biggest is to be part of a community which is driving the innovation for the next gen networks at the edge.

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

HPE has contributions on the LF Edge Governing Board and TAC, HPE has also made some contributions to the infrastructure requirements for LF Edge. HPE is also actively involved in LF edge projects such as Akraino and process adoption.

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

There are two main reasons LF Edge is different from other industry alliances

  1. A wide set of different community members: There is a wide variety of community members in LF edge from telco services providers, NEPs to chip manufacturers. This provides different viewpoints and provides the right level of expertise that is needed.
  2. Projects execution: The community really believes in executing and we have seen some projects coming from idea to development and then testing at a very fast pace.

How will  LF Edge help your business?

HPE is leading infrastructure provider and have wide variety of solutions for the edge. We are also leading MEC (Multi Access Edge Computing) initiatives with some major telcos. By being part of LFEdge we get access to latest innovations and resources in edge computing. This can help us build our solution to fit industry needs.

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

There are so many projects LF Edge is driving, the best place to start would be to pick a project which aligns with your company’s directions and see how you can drive innovation with your contributions for the project. There are many resources available and all the community members are very helpful to provide any info you need.

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

Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the  LF Edge Slack to share your thoughts and engage with community members. 

 

August 27, 2020

LF Edge Member Spotlight: Mocana

By Blog, EdgeX Foundry, LF Edge, Member Spotlight

The LF Edge community comprises 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 sat down with Dave Smith, President of Mocana, to discuss the importance of open source, collaborating with industry leaders in edge computing, security, how they leverage the EdgeX Foundry framework and the impact of being a part of the LF Edge ecosystem.

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

Mocana revolutionizes OT and IoT with cyber protection as a service for trustworthy systems. The company helps device operators bridge the adoption challenge between vendors and service providers, and delivers key cybersecurity benefits to the emerging 5G network, edge computing applications, and SD-WAN enterprise networks. Mocana protects the content delivery supply chain and device lifecycle for tamper-resistance from manufacture to end of life, with root-of-trust and chain-of-trust anchors. Mocana measures devices for sustained integrity and the trustworthiness of operations and data to power artificial intelligence/machine learning analytics. The Mocana team of security professionals works with semiconductor vendors and certificate authorities to integrate with emerging technologies to comply with data privacy and protection standards. The goal of cyber protection as a service is to eliminate the initial cost of modernization for device vendors and empower service providers to offer subscription-based services for the effective and efficient expansion of corporate and industrial digital transformation strategies.

Mocana’s core technology protects more than 100 million devices today, and is trusted by more than 200 of the largest energy, government, healthcare, manufacturing, IoT, telecommunications & networking, and transportation companies globally.

Why is your organization adopting an open-source approach?

Mocana is eager to support the global body of customers adopting the EdgeX Foundry open source solution. OpenSSL is by far the most broadly integrated and implemented open source security stack. It comes freely available and is distributed as part of the LF Edge distributions. However, in recent years OpenSSL has come under scrutiny because of critical security vulnerabilities and the resulting issuance of CVEs. The Heartbleed vulnerability from 2014 was a notable exploit, and there are several other recent CVEs that have generated concern in the information security community. The strategy of taking a defensive position through ongoing patching of vulnerabilities continues to challenge efforts to protect mission-critical OT environments.

Since the founding of the LF Edge projects, the goal has been to pull together a body of code to standardize the microservices delivery and orchestration for edge computing systems and devices. The projects continues to advance commercial third-party solutions to address key functional areas, especially for mission-critical and vertical industry applications. Mocana’s solution is based upon a commercially supported, NIST FIPS 140-2 certified, cryptographic module. Many of the company’s Fortune 500 customers have realized significant benefits from the ability to quickly migrate from default products integrated with OpenSSL to Mocana’s offering, leveraging its OpenSSL connector.

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

Developing, deploying, operating, and managing IoT and edge computing requires a community of key, forward-looking technology innovators. The IoT-edge ecosystem spans a wide supply chain from first silicon to the cloud, and includes system integrators, end-user operators and asset owners. Mocana was one of the first 50 founding members of EdgeX Foundry in 2017. Early on, the company took an industry leadership position by driving industry adoption through off-the-shelf solutions developed through stakeholder collaboration. This approach addressed a variety of common use cases delivered by new edge computing technologies and applications, and required much more than a reference architecture. Mocana recognized the need for the user community and developing ecosystem to leverage community-developed code (e.g. Github) to reduce feature and software code duplication and enable the broadest possible market adoption. The customer benefit reduces the implementation risk for such new technologies and accelerates community stakeholder time to market.

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

Mocana values LF Edge’s ecosystem breadth and depth of community members and stakeholders, which includes chip companies, device ODMs, OEMs, carrier service providers, and asset owner/operators. Each contributes key use case challenges that have been invaluable for ensuring that LF Edge can support key technology developments and marketplace challenges.

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

As key contributor to the community, Mocana worked with the EdgeX Foundry Security Working Group and offered insights and guidance on vital security use cases. The company ensured there was always a path to address developing cybersecurity mandates and best practices from NIST Cybersecurity Framework and ISA/IEC 62443. As a result, the community has delivered a number of key security functions. They added a reverse proxy, provided a method to secure the key store with the ability to manage it, and has integrated access to session-based security to the microservices.

Perhaps most important, Mocana has enabled the community to incorporate a scalable, robust, and commercially supported cybersecurity offering for EdgeX Foundry production development and deployments.

Mocana developed its OpenSSL connector to ease migration from default project configurations with OpenSSL to Mocana’s TrustCenter and TrustPoint offerings. This solution aligns well with the project’s objectives to accelerate adoption and deployments of standardized implementations addressing key edge computing use cases with microservices.

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

Delivering actual code that organizations can download, compile, run, and then operate is a tremendous benefit compared to most other industry alliances. It is a major differential in comparison to groups that only suggest frameworks and prescriptions of possible features, implementations, and suggested “best practices.”

How will LF Edge help your business?

Demand is growing for edge computing solutions. Hitting 5 million downloads of the EdgeX Foundry SDK in May are proof of that. Mocana also is beginning to see initial commercial success and adoption in the innovation and R&D centers by key community members. The company’s ability to enable its fully integrated TrustCenter and TrustPoint solutions leveraging an OpenSSL connector provides a clear and rapid path to EdgeX device security lifecycle management and supply chain provenance. Plus, it will increase adoption of Mocana’s latest edge device offerings from the community.

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

Find your niche in one of LF Edge’s nine collaborative projects where your offering can deliver the most value and contribute. There has never been a better time to participate in this open source community, which is looking for complementary solutions and ways to deepen the ecosystem.

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

Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the  LF Edge Slack or the EdgeX Foundry Slack to share your thoughts and engage with community members.

July 30, 2020

LF Edge Member Spotlight: Section

By Blog, Member Spotlight, State of the Edge

The LF Edge community is comprised of a diverse set of member companies 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 sat down with Molly Wojcik, Director of Education & Awareness for Section, to discuss the importance of open source, their drive to standardize and accelerate the edge, how they contribute to the State of the Edge project and the impact of being a member of the LF Edge community.

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

Section is all about empowering developers to be the heroes in edge computing innovation by giving them control and flexibility to run any workload along the edge continuum to meet the specific needs of their application. Users can deploy their own custom workloads (containers/serverless) or leverage best-of-breed software available in Section’s edge module marketplace. Solutions include web application firewalls (WAFs), bot management, image optimization, A/B & multivariate testing, virtual waiting room, and many more.

Section was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2012. Headquarters are now in Colorado, and the Section team spans across the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Section has been recognized by industry analysts and peers as a leader in the edge compute landscape and is backed by a group of top-shelf venture capital firms, led by The Foundry Group. 

Our platform significantly reduces cost and complexity for web engineers seeking to capitalize on the benefits of the edge for their application. Docker-powered and Kubernetes-orchestrated, the Section platform optimizes edge workload distribution, scalability, traffic routing, diagnostics, and more, to allow engineers to focus on their core application functionality while meeting performance, security, and scalability goals.

Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?

From day one, we have stuck by three guiding principles: open, control, and easy. We believe the framework we provide (and the edge) should be open. Engineers should have tangible control over that edge, and we should make it easy for them to use.

The key challenges of the edge are industry-wide and user-specific. Developing a truly successful edge fabric to meet the needs of tomorrow’s Internet will be dependent on certain levels of cooperation and standardization. The closed networks of proprietary software, such as legacy CDNs, which served the Internet from 2000 until today, aren’t capable of solving the hundreds of thousands of edge locations and truly custom workloads that engineers will need to run in those locations. Work underway by collaborative open standards bodies, such as LF Edge, the Open Networking Foundation and Multi-access Edge Computing are meeting this challenge head-on to build a truly successful edge fabric.

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

In line with our drive to standardize and accelerate the edge, we were excited to join LF Edge and become part of this community-forged movement, working to move edge computing forward and build an open-source software stack. We believe that LF Edge will play a similar pivotal role in advancing the edge computing ecosystem as the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has done in advancing the microservices ecosystem.

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

One of the top benefits for us is the opportunity to participate in a community alongside other vendors, developers, OEMs and infrastructure providers, working together to develop a common set of standards and achieve wider interoperability. At this point in the evolution of edge computing, we still struggle with shared definitions, and LF Edge has been working tirelessly since its start to create an open and standard framework for the technology, which industry leaders can coalesce around.

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

The edge ecosystem is extremely diverse, and where some may specialize in IoT or the device/user edge, our focus tends to lean more heavily on the infrastructure/service provider edge. Lending our experience and perspective alongside contributions from the larger LF Edge community helps bridge gaps to provide a more comprehensive understanding of edge challenges and solutions.

On a more personal level, I have recently taken on the role of Chair of the State of the Edge Landscape Working Group. The LF Edge Interactive Landscape uses the CNCF’s Interactive Landscape as a guide and framework, intending for it to play a similar role in the edge community as a go-to resource. The interactive map categorizes LF Edge projects, in addition to edge-related organizations and technologies, to offer a comprehensive overview of the edge ecosystem. It is dynamically generated from data maintained in a community-supported GitHub account.

I’ve been involved as an active contributor and facilitator within the Landscape working group since its beginnings with LF Edge in early 2019. With a better together approach, I believe that building community is fundamental to advancing the edge ecosystem, so becoming Chair of the Edge Landscape Working Groups represents an ideal opportunity to play a central part in building this important shared resource.

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

The fact that LF Edge is an umbrella organization independent of hardware, silicon, cloud or OS, not working to build leads, but rather to align and educate, is refreshing. Its neutrality allows many diverse community members to participate in its mission, from enterprise to journalists to non-profits. This in turn is enabling LF Edge to ask the big questions and be unafraid to explore how edge computing will transform the Internet.

How will  LF Edge help your business?

Section aims to provide unmatched flexibility for developers to customize, deploy, and optimize workloads for their unique application architecture. We want to empower developers to be able to choose their software, the number of endpoints, and where the application edge should live. We were the first within the edge platform space to offer full integration with agile development workflows. We thrive on being part of LF Edge, helping build awareness of developer and engineer needs at the edge. LF Edge represents the opportunity for us to help build a shared vocabulary and vision for edge computing, that equally works towards our mission of empowering application engineers to run any workload, anywhere. 

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

As with any community, you only get out what you put it. If you’re looking to broaden and deepen your connections, knowledge, and contributions to really drive edge computing forward, LF Edge provides a lot of different opportunities to give and get.

To find out more about our members or how to join LF Edge, click here. To learn more about the Edge Computing Landscape, click here.

Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the  LF Edge Slack Channel and share your thoughts in the #community or #stateoftheedge-landscape channels. 

 

June 30, 2020
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