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State of the Edge

Finalists for the 2020 Edge Woman of the Year Award!

By Blog, State of the Edge

Written by Candice Digby, Partner and Events Manager at Vapor IO, a LF Edge member and active community member in the State of the Edge Project

Last year’s Edge Woman of the Year winner Farah Papaioannou is ready to pass the torch.

“I was honored to have been chosen as Edge Woman of the Year 2019 and to be recognized alongside many inspiring and innovative women across the industry,” said Farah Papaioannou, Co-Founder and President of Edgeworx, Inc. “I am thrilled to pay that recognition forward and participate in announcing this year’s Edge Woman of the Year 2020 finalist categories; together we have a lot to accomplish.”

(left to right) Matt Trifiro, Farah Papaioannou, Gavin Whitechurch

With more nominations in the 2nd annual competition, it was difficult for State of the Edge and Edge Computing World to select only ten top finalists. The Edge Woman of the Year 2020 nominees represent industry leaders in roles that are impacting the direction of their organization’s strategy, technology or communications around edge computing, edge software, edge infrastructure or edge systems.

The Edge Woman of the Year Award represents a long-term industry commitment to highlight the growing importance of the contributions and accomplishments made by women in edge computing.  The award is presented at the annual Edge Computing World event which gathers the whole edge computing ecosystem, from network to cloud and application to infrastructure end-users and developers while also sharing edge best practices.

The annual Edge Woman of the Year Award is presented to outstanding female and non-binary professionals in edge computing for outstanding performance in their roles elevating Edge. The 2020 award committee selected the following 10 finalists for their excellent work in the named categories:

  • Leadership in Edge Startups
    • Kathy Do, VP, Finance and Operations at MemVerge
  • Leadership in Edge Open Source Contributions
    • Malini Bhandaru, Open Source Lead for IoT & Edge at VMware
  • Leadership in Edge at a Large Organization
    • Jenn Didoni, Head of Cloud Portfolio at Vodafone Group Business
  • Leadership in Edge Security
    • Ramya Ravichandar, VP of Product Management at FogHorn
  • Leadership in Edge Innovation and Research
    • Kathleen Kallot, Director, AI Ecosystem, arm
  • Leadership in Edge Industry and Technology
    • Fay Arjomandi, Founder and CEO, mimik technology, Inc.
  • Leadership in Edge Best Practices
    • Nurit Sprecher, Head of Management & Virtualization Standards, Nokia
  • Leadership in Edge Infrastructure
    • Meredith Schuler, Financial & Strategic Operations Manager, SBA Edge
  • Overall Edge Industry Leadership
    • Nancy Shemwell, Chief Operating Officer, Trilogy Networks, Inc.
  • Leadership in Executing Edge Strategy
    • Angie McMillin, Vice President and General Manager, IT Systems, Vertiv

The “Top Ten Women in Edge” finalists are selected from nominations and submissions submitted by experts in edge from around the world. The final winner will be chosen by a panel of industry judges. The winner of the Edge Woman of the Year 2020 will be announced during this year’s Edge Computing World, being held virtually October 12-15, 2020.

For more information on the Women in Edge Award visit: https://www.lfedge.org/2020/08/25/state-of-the-edge-and-edge-computing-world-announce-finalists-for-the-2020-edge-woman-of-the-year-award/

 

August 25, 2020

Breaking Down the Edge Continuum

By Blog, State of the Edge, Trend, Use Cases

Written by Kurt Rinehart, Director of Data Science at Section. This blog originally ran on the Section website. For more content like this, please click here.

There are many definitions of “the edge” out there. Sometimes it can seem as if everyone has their own version.

LF Edge, an umbrella organization that brings together industry leaders to build “an open source framework for the edge,” has a number of edge projects under its remit, each of which seeks to unify the industry around coalescing principles and thereby accelerate open source edge computing developments. Part of its remit is to define what the edge is, an invaluable resource for the edge community to coalesce around.

Latest LF Edge White Paper: Sharpening the Edge

In 2018, State of the Edge (which recently became an official project of LF Edge) put out its inaugural report, defining the edge using four criteria:

  • “The edge is a location not a thing;
  • There are lots of edges, but the edge we care about today is the edge of the last mile network;
  • This edge has two sides: an infrastructure edge and a device edge;
  • Compute will exist on both sides, working in coordination with the centralized cloud.”

Since that inaugural report, much has evolved within the edge ecosystem. The latest white paper from LF Edge, Sharpening the Edge: Overview of the LF Edge Taxonomy and Framework, expands on these definitions and moves on from simply defining two sides (the infrastructure and the device edge) to use the concept of an edge continuum.

The Edge Continuum

The concept of the edge continuum describes the distribution of resources and software stacks between centralized data centers and deployed nodes in the field as “a path, on both the service provider and user sides of the last mile network.”

In almost the same breath, LF Edge also describes edge computing as essentially “distributed cloud computing, comprising multiple application components interconnected by a network.”

We typically think of “the edge” or “the edges” in terms of the physical devices or infrastructure where application elements run. However, the idea of a path between the centralized cloud (also referred to as “the cloud edge” or “Internet edge”) and the device edge instead allows for the conceptualization of multiple steps along the way.

The latest white paper concentrates on two main edge categories within the edge continuum: the Service Provider Edge and the User Edge (each of which is broken down into further subcategories).

edge continuum diagram
Image source: LF Edge

The Service Provider Edge and the User Edge

LF Edge positions devices at one extreme of the edge continuum and the cloud at the other.

Next along the line of the continuum after the cloud, also described as “the first main edge tier”, is the Service Provider (SP) Edge. Similarly to the public cloud, the infrastructure that runs at the SP Edge (compute, storage and networking) is usually consumed as a service. In addition to the public cloud, there are also cellular-based solutions at the SP Edge, which are typically more secure and private than the public cloud, as a result of the differences between the Internet and cellular systems. The SP Edge leverages substantial investments by Communications Service Providers (CSPs) into the network edge, including hundreds of thousands of servers at Points of Presence (PoPs). Infrastructure at this edge tier is largely more standardized than compute at the User Edge.

The second top-level edge tier is the User Edge, which is on the other side of the last mile network. It represents a wider mix of resources in comparison to the SP Edge, and “as a general rule, the closer the edge compute resources get to the physical world, the more constrained and specialized they become.” In comparison to the SP Edge and the cloud where resources are owned by these entities and shared across multiple users, resources at the User Edge tend to be customer-owned and operated.

Moving from the Cloud to the Edge

What do we mean when we talk about moving from the cloud to the edge? Each of the stages along the edge continuum take you progressively closer to the end user. You have high latency and more compute in the centralized cloud versus low latency and less compute as you get closer to the User Edge. When we talk about moving from the cloud to the edge, it means we want to leverage the whole stack and not solely focus on the centralized cloud.

Let’s look at the most obvious use case: content delivery networks (CDNs). In the 1990s, Akamai created content delivery networks to allow localized websites to serve a global audience. A website based in New York could leverage Akamai’s distributed network of proxy servers and data centers around the world to be able to store their static assets globally, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, video, and images. By caching these in Akamai’s distributed global points of presence (PoP), the website’s end users worldwide were guaranteed high availability and consistent performance.

These days, CDNs are considered to be only one layer in a highly complex Internet ecosystem. Content owners such as media companies and e-commerce vendors continue to pay CDN operators to deliver their content to end users. In turn, a CDN pays ISPs, carriers, and network operators for hosting its servers in their data centers. That’s the Service Provider Edge we’re talking about.

An edge compute platform is still a geographically distributed network, but instead of simply providing proxy servers and data centers, an edge compute platform also offers compute. How do we define this? Compute can be defined as many things, but essentially, it boils down to the ability to run workloads wherever you need to run them. Compute still gives you high availability and performance, but it also allows for the capability to run packaged and custom workloads positioned relatively spatially to users.

An edge compute platform leverages all available compute between the cloud provider and the end user, together with DevOps practices, to deliver traditional CDN and custom workloads.

Applying Lessons from the Cloud to the Edge

We can take the lessons we’ve learned in the cloud and apply them to the edge. These include:

  • Flexibility – At Section, we describe this as wanting to be able to run “any workload, anywhere”, including packaged and customized workloads;
  • Taking a multi-provider approach to deployments – This offers the opportunity to create a higher layer of abstraction. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the process of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine-readable definition files as opposed to physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools. At Section, we have 6-7 different providers, from cloud providers to boutique providers to bare metal providers.
  • Applying DevOps practices – In order to provide the capabilities that the cloud has at the infrastructure edge, we need to enable developers to get insight and to run things at the edge at speed, just as they did in the cloud. This is DevOps. It’s important to be able to apply DevOps practices here since, “if you build it, you own it”. You want to make things open, customizable, and API-driven with integrations, so that developers can leverage and build on top of them.
  • Leveraging containerized workloads – Deploying containers at the edge involves multiple challenges, particularly around connectivity, distribution and synchronization, but it can be done, and in doing, allows you to leverage this architecture to deploy your own logic, not just pre-packaged ones. Containerization also offers:
    • Security
    • Standardization
    • Isolation; and
    • A lightweight footprint.
  • Insights and Visibility – We need to give developers deep, robust insight into what’s happening at the edge, just as we do in the cloud. The three pillars of observability are logs, metrics and tracing. An ELK stack can provide this, giving developers the invaluable ability to understand what is happening when things inevitably go wrong.

Edge Computing Use Cases in the Wild

There are many examples of use cases already operating at the Edge. A few of the many interesting ones out there include:

  • Facebook Live – When you see a live stream in your feed and click on it, you are requesting the manifest. If the manifest isn’t already on your local PoP, the request travels to the data center to get the manifest, and then fetches the media files in 1 second clips. ML algorithms operate on the 1 second clips to optimize them in real time to deliver the best, fastest experience for users.
  • Cloudflare Workers – These are Service Worker API implementations for the Cloudflare platform. They deploy a server-side approach to running JavaSCript workloads on Cloudflare’s global network.
  • Chick-fil-A – A surprising one. Chick-fil-A has been pushing into the device edge over the last couple of years. Each of their 20,000 stores has a Kubernetes cluster that runs there. The goal: “low latency, Internet-independent applications that can reliably run our business”, in addition to high availability for these applications, a platform that enables rapid innovation, and the ability to horizontally scale.

We’re Not Throwing Away the Cloud

One last thing to make clear: we’re not talking about throwing away the cloud. The cloud is going nowhere. We will be working alongside it, using it. What we’re talking about is moving the boundary of our applications out of the cloud closer to the end user, into the compute that is available there. And, as we’ve seen, we don’t need to throw away the lessons we’ve learned in the cloud; we can still use the tools that we’re used to, plus gain all the advantages that the edge continuum has to offer.

You can download the LF Edge taxonomy white paper here. You can also watch the LF Edge Taxonomy Webinar, which shares insight from the white paper, on our Youtube Channel. Click here to watch it now.  

August 18, 2020

State of the Edge and Edge Computing World Announce Finalists for the 2020 Edge Woman of the Year Award

By Announcement, State of the Edge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edge Computing Industry Comes Together to Recognize Top Ten Women Shaping the Future of Edge

SAN FRANCISCO – August 17, 2020 – Edge computing leaders from State of the Edge and Edge Computing World announce the Second Annual Edge Woman of the Year Award 2020 top ten finalists.  The Edge Woman of the Year 2020 nominees represent industry leaders in roles that are impacting the direction of their organization’s strategy, technology or communications around edge computing, edge software, edge infrastructure or edge systems. The “Top Ten Women in Edge” finalists are selected from nominations and submissions submitted by experts in edge from around the world. The final winner will be chosen by a panel of industry judges, including the previous Edge Woman of the Year winner, Farah Papaioannou. The winner of the Edge Woman of the Year 2020 will be announced during this year’s Edge Computing World, being held virtually October 12-15, 2020.

“I was honored to have been chosen as Edge Woman of the Year 2019 and to be recognized alongside many inspiring and innovative women across the industry,” said Farah Papaioannou, Co-Founder and President of Edgeworx, Inc. “I am thrilled to pay that recognition forward and participate in announcing this year’s Edge Woman of the Year 2020 finalist categories; together we have a lot to accomplish.”

The Edge Woman of the Year Award represents a long-term industry commitment to highlight the growing importance of the contributions and accomplishments made by women in edge computing.  The award is presented at the annual Edge Computing World event which gathers the whole edge computing ecosystem, from network to cloud and application to infrastructure end-users and developers while also sharing edge best practices.

The annual Edge Woman of the Year Award is presented to outstanding female and non-binary professionals in edge computing for outstanding performance in their roles elevating Edge. The 2020 award committee selected the following 10 finalists for their excellent work in the named categories:

  • Leadership in Edge Startups
    • Kathy Do, VP, Finance and Operations at MemVerge
  • Leadership in Edge Open Source Contributions
    • Malini Bhandaru, Open Source Lead for IoT & Edge at VMware
  • Leadership in Edge at a Large Organization
    • Jenn Didoni, Head of Cloud Portfolio at Vodafone Group Business
  • Leadership in Edge Security
    • Ramya Ravichandar, VP of Product Management at FogHorn
  • Leadership in Edge Innovation and Research
    • Kathleen Kallot, Director, AI Ecosystem, arm
  • Leadership in Edge Industry and Technology
    • Fay Arjomandi, Founder and CEO, mimik technology, Inc.
  • Leadership in Edge Best Practices
    • Nurit Sprecher, Head of Management & Virtualization Standards, Nokia
  • Leadership in Edge Infrastructure
    • Meredith Schuler, Financial & Strategic Operations Manager, SBA Edge
  • Overall Edge Industry Leadership
    • Nancy Shemwell, Chief Operating Officer, Trilogy Networks, Inc.
  • Leadership in Executing Edge Strategy
    • Angie McMillin, Vice President and General Manager, IT Systems, Vertiv

“The edge computing industry in 2020 continues to grow rapidly. Once again, we had an impressive group of nominees representing a broad cross-section of the many women leaders in edge,” said Candice Digby, a representative of State of the Edge and co-founder of the award. “The Edge Woman of the Year award highlights the impact these women continue to make across the industry and we hope to draw attention to their advancements and encourage  more women to pursue  careers in edge.”

“All the submissions were incredibly impressive and the list of Edge Woman of the Year finalists represents a group of women taking the reins of leadership across the edge computing ecosystem,” said Gavin Whitechurch of Topio Networks and Edge Computing World,  “As the edge industry continues to grow, we want to highlight the female innovators leading the edge computing revolution, working hard to achieve new ground for the industry as a whole.”

For more information on the Women in Edge Award visit: http://www.edgecomputingworld.com/edgewomanoftheyear. 

About State of the Edge

The State of Edge (http://stateoftheedge.com) is a member-supported research organization that produces free reports on edge computing and was the original creator of the Open Glossary of Edge Computing, which was donated to The Linux Foundation’s LF Edge. The State of the Edge welcomes additional participants, contributors and supporters. If you have an interest in participating in upcoming reports or submitting a guest post to the State of the Edge Blog, feel free to reach out by emailing info@stateoftheedge.com.

About Edge Computing World

Edge Computing World is the only industry event that brings together the entire edge ecosystem.

The industry event will present a diverse range of high growth application areas – including AI, IoT, NFV, Augmented Reality, video, cloud gaming & self-driving vehicles – are creating new demands that cannot be met by existing infrastructure.  The theme will cover edge as a new solution required to deal with low latency, application autonomy, data security and bandwidth thinning, which all require greater capability closer to the point of consumption.

Join us at Edge Computing World October 12-15, 2020 for the world’s largest virtual edge computing event.

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August 17, 2020

The Over the Edge Podcast

By Blog, State of the Edge

If you ask 100 people to define edge, you might get 112 different answers, but we do know this much: Edge computing represents a long-term transformation of the Internet that could take decades to fully materialize.

Over The Edge is a podcast about edge computing and those in the industry who are creating the future of the internet. On the show we talk to corporate leaders, open-source experts, technologists, journalists, analysts, and the community at large, to discuss technological innovations, trends, practical applications, business models, and the occasional far-flung theory. Over the Edge is brought to you by the sponsorship of Catchpoint, NetFoundry, Ori Industries, Packet, Seagate, Vapor IO, and Zenlayer.

Listen to the podcast here: OverTheEdgePodcast.com

Check out some of the LF Edge member interviews:

July 29 – Matt Trifiro, VaporIO

July 29 – Galeal Zino, Netfoundry

July 29 – Jacob Smith, Packet

August 5 – Joe Zhu, Zenlayer

August 19 – Malini Bhandaru, VMware

August 26 – Jason Shepherd, ZEDEDA

 

August 11, 2020

State of the Edge and Edge Computing World Seeks to Recognize Women Shaping the Future of Edge

By Awards, Blog, State of the Edge

Written by Candice Digby, Partner and Events Manager at Vapor IO, a LF Edge member and active leader in the State of the Edge Project

As 2020 continues to surprise the world with new changes and challenges, the need for diversified leadership and tech innovation has never been more clear. In an effort to help promote and encourage progress in the edge industry, The LF Edge’s State of the Edge and Edge Computing World present the second annual Edge Woman of the Year Award.

 

The award recognizes leaders who have been impacting their organization’s strategy, technology or communications around edge computing, edge software, edge infrastructure or edge systems. The organizers encourage industry participants to nominate their colleagues, or for qualified women to nominate themselves. The “Top Ten Women in Edge” finalists will be selected by the organizers and the final winner will be chosen by a panel of industry judges. Finalists will be announced at Edge Computing World, being held virtually October 12-15, 2020. The Edge Woman of the Year will be announced on October 12th during the keynote session.

In addition to honoring the 10 semi-finalists and the ultimate Edge Woman of the Year, the organizations will also showcase the exceptional women who make up the advisory board, who are leaders in the industry themselves. Along with last year’s Edge Woman of the Year, Farah Papaioannou, Founder and President of Edgeworx, the 2020 advisory board includes:

  • Nadine Alameh, CEO, Open Geospatial Consortium
  • Samantha Clarke, Director of Business Development, Seagate Technology
  • Eliane Fiolet, Co-founder, Ubergizmo
  • Janet George, GVP Autonomous Enterprise, Oracle Cloud
  • Maribel Lopez, Founder and Principal Analyst, Lopez Research
  • Maemalynn Meanor, Senior PR, Marketing and Social Media Manager, The Linux Foundation
  • Carolina Milanesi, Founder, The Heart of Tech
  • Molly Wojcik, Director of Education & Awareness, Section
  • Michelle Davis, Manager, DoD/IC Specialist SA team, Red Hat

(Matt Trifiro, Farah Papaioannou, Gavin Whitechurch)

The Edge Woman of the Year 2019 award recognized Papaioannou for her outstanding impact on the edge computing industry and her multidimensional technology leadership, including venture capital, edge cloud computing, and open source projects. Now, she’ll join the impressive list of women choosing this year’s winner.

“It was an honor to acknowledge an exceptionally strong group of nominees last year, and we look forward to again recognizing those iterating on the edge computing technology in exceptionally creative ways this year,” said Gavin Whitechurch of Topio Networks and Edge Computing World. “It is imperative we take note of and acknowledge our colleagues leading the edge computing revolution, and we look forward to doing that with this year’s Edge Woman of the Year award.”

For more information on the Woman in Edge Award or to nominate someone, please visit http://www.edgecomputingworld.com/edgewomanoftheyear.

About State of the Edge

State of the Edge is an open source project under the LF Edge umbrella that publishes free research on edge computing. It is a Stage 2 project (growth) under LF Edge and is divided into three working groups: Open Glossary of Edge Computing, the Edge Computing Landscape and the State of the Edge reports. All State of the Edge research is offered free-of-charge under a Creative Commons license, including the landmark 2018 State of the Edge report, the 2019 Data at the Edge report and, most recently, the 2020 State of the Edge report.

About Edge Computing World

Edge Computing World is the only event that brings together users and developers with the entire edge ecosystem to accelerate the edge market & build the next generation of the internet. For 2020 the virtual event focuses on expanding the market, with new features including the Free-to-Attend Edge Developers Conference & the Free-to-End Users Edge Executive Conference.

July 21, 2020

State of the Edge and Edge Computing World Present the Second Annual Edge Woman of the Year Award

By Announcement, State of the Edge

Edge Computing Industry Seeks to Recognize Women Shaping the Future of Edge and Invites Nominations for 2020

AUSTIN, Texas – July 1, 2020 – State of the Edge, an open source project under the LF Edge umbrella dedicated to publishing free research on edge computing, and Edge Computing World, an event that brings together the entire edge ecosystem, have announced they are accepting nominations for the Second Annual Edge Woman of the Year Award 2020. The award recognizes leaders who have been impacting their organization’s strategy, technology or communications around edge computing, edge software, edge infrastructure or edge systems. The organizers encourage industry participants to nominate their colleagues for qualified women to nominate themselves. The “Top Ten Women in Edge” finalists will be selected by the organizers and the final winner will be chosen by a panel of industry judges. Finalists will be announced at Edge Computing World, being held virtually October 12-15, 2020.

“By honoring the innovative women pushing the edge computing industry forward, we acknowledge the importance of their work and the continued need for diversity in a burgeoning and innovative field,” said Candice Digby, Partnerships and Events Manager at Vapor IO. “We are thrilled to host the second annual Edge Woman of the Year award program and look forward to honoring this year’s leader.”

State of the Edge and Edge Computing World are proud to sponsor the second annual Edge Woman of the Year Award, presented to outstanding female and non-binary professionals in edge computing for exceptional performance in their roles elevating Edge. This award highlights the growing importance of the contributions and accomplishments of women in this innovative industry. Nominations are now being accepted, and can be entered here.

Nominees will be evaluated on the following criteria:

  • Career contributions and involvements (ex. industry associations, open-source contributions, etc.)
  • Overall involvement in greater technology industry and demonstration of leadership qualities
  • Specific contributions to edge computing (team projects and collaborations admissible)
  • Contributions and involvement need not be technical; the award may be given to those in functions that include senior leadership, sales, marketing, etc.

Advisory Board of the 2020 Edge Woman of the Year Award include:

  • Nadine Alameh, CEO, Open Geospatial Consortium
  • Samantha Clarke, Director of Business Development, Seagate Technology
  • Michelle Davis, Manager, DoD/IC Specialist SA team, Red Hat
  • Eliane Fiolet, Co-Founder, Ubergizmo
  • Janet George, GVP Autonomous Enterprise, Oracle Cloud
  • Maribel Lopez, Founder and Principal Analyst, Lopez Research
  • Maemalynn Meanor, Senior PR and Marketing Manager, The Linux Foundation
  • Carolina Milanesi, Founder, The Heart of Tech
  • Molly Wojcik, Director of Education & Awareness, Section

“It was an honor to acknowledge an exceptionally strong group of nominees last year, and we look forward to again recognizing those iterating on the edge computing technology in exceptionally creative ways this year,” said Gavin Whitechurch of Topio Networks and Edge Computing World. “It is imperative we take note of and acknowledge our colleagues leading the edge computing revolution, and we look forward to doing that with this year’s Edge Woman of the Year award.”

For more information on the Women in Edge Award, please visit http://www.edgecomputingworld.com/edgewomanoftheyear.

About State of the Edge

State of the Edge is an open source project under the LF Edge umbrella that publishes free research on edge computing. It is a Stage 2 project (growth) under LF Edge and is divided into three working groups: Open Glossary of Edge Computing, the Edge Computing Landscape and the State of the Edge reports. All State of the Edge research is  offered free-of-charge under a Creative Commons license, including the landmark 2018 State of the Edge report, the 2019 Data at the Edge report and, most recently, the 2020 State of the Edge report.

About Edge Computing World

Edge Computing World is the only event that brings together users and developers with the entire edge ecosystem to accelerate the edge market & build the next generation of the internet. For 2020 the virtual event focuses on expanding the market, with new features including the Free-to-Attend Edge Developers Conference & the Free-to-End Users Edge Executive Conference.

July 1, 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

The LF Edge Interactive Landscape

By Blog, Landscape, LF Edge, State of the Edge

New tool aims to help users understand and navigate the expansive edge computing ecosystem, requesting collaboration from the edge community.

Written by Molly Wojcik, Chair of the State of the Edge Landscape Working Group

A few years ago, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) introduced their CNCF Cloud Native Interactive Landscape, which quickly became a go-to resource for the cloud-native ecosystem. Using this as a guide and framework, the State of the Edge project has been building the LF Edge Interactive Landscape.

The LF Edge Interactive Landscape is dynamically generated from data maintained in a community-supported Github account. Based on user inputs and overseen by the State of the Edge Landscape Working Group, the map categorizes LF Edge projects alongside edge-related organizations and technologies to provide a comprehensive overview of the edge ecosystem.

The State of the Edge Landscape Working Group needs help from the larger edge community to continue to build out and improve this resource. Pull requests and issue submissions are welcome and encouraged, whether for new additions or for edits to existing listings.

How to Add a New Listing to the LF Edge Interactive Landscape

To add a new listing to the LF Edge Interactive Landscape, follow the steps using one of the options below:

Option 1: Submit a PR

  1. Visit the community Github repository at https://github.com/State-of-the-Edge/lfedge-landscape
  2. Open a pull request to add your listing to landscape.yml. Follow formatting of peer listings, making sure to include all required information and logo file:
    1. Name of organization or technology
    2. Homepage url
    3. .svg logo (Important: Only .svg formatted logos are accepted.) – see https://github.com/State-of-the-Edge/lfedge-landscape#logos for help converting/creating proper SVGs
    4. Twitter url (if applicable)
    5. Crunchbase url
    6. Assigned category (Descriptions for categories can be found in the README.md)

Full instructions available at https://github.com/State-of-the-Edge/lfedge-landscape#new-entries

Option 2: Open an issue

  1. Visit the community Github repository at https://github.com/State-of-the-Edge/lfedge-landscape
  2. Open an issue that includes all required information and logo file (reference Option 1).

Option 3: Email

  1. Email glossary-wg-landscape@lists.lfedge.org with all of the required information and logo (reference Option 1).

How to Modify a Listing in the LF Edge Interactive Landscape

To modify or make suggestions on an existing listing in the LF Edge Interactive Landscape, open an issue in the Github repository and be sure to include the following information:

  • Name of organization or technology, as listed in the landscape.
  • Detailed description of the modifications that you are requesting.

For more detailed information and instructions, you may refer to the README.md in the Github repository.

About State of the Edge

Founded in 2017, State of the Edge (recently acquired by LF Edge) provides a vendor-neutral, community-driven platform for open research on edge computing while also seeking to align the market on what edge computing truly is and what’s needed to implement it. State of the Edge publishes free research on Edge Computing, maintains the Open Glossary of Edge Computing and oversees the LF Edge Interactive Landscape. Follow State of the Edge on Twitter via @StateoftheEdge.

Molly Wojcik was recently appointed Chair of the State of the Edge Landscape Working Group. She is the Director of Education & Awareness at Section, an edge compute platform technology provider, an LF Edge member organization. Molly has been involved as an active contributor and facilitator within the Landscape working group since its beginnings with LF Edge in early 2019. If you have questions or would like to be involved int he LF Edge Landscape, feel free to email Molly at molly@section.io.

June 11, 2020

Creating the State of the Edge Report

By Blog, State of the Edge

This blog originally ran on Mission.org as part of their IT Visionaries podcast that shares conversations with Fortune 1000 Tech Leaders. In this post, IT Visionaries talks with Matt Trifiro, co-chair of State of the Edge, LF Edge member and CMO at Vapor IO. To listen to the podcast, click here. 

Do you know the current state of the edge? If you do, it’s most likely because of the work that Matthew Trifiro has done in recent years. Matthew is the CMO at Vapor IO and Co-Chair at State of the Edge  and on this episode of IT Visionaries, he tells us about how and why he wanted to create the State of the Edge report. Plus, he explains what is going on in the world of edge computing and what might come next.

Key Takeaways

  • The State of the Edge report is an authority on what is really going on in the world of edge computing
  • Moving to edge computing is going to be a necessary part of the re-architecture of the internet
  • The speed with which we need to analyze data is increasing, which means we need to use edge computing to analyze in real-time

Creating State of the Edge

Matt and one of his peers were looking for a way to cut through all the noise in the world of edge computing. There was so much going on with edge and people have always defined “edge” in different ways, so Matt wanted to bring experts together to come up with something everyone could agree on. Working with partners and funders, Matt and his team were able to create an unbiased report that many look to as the definitive authority on the true “state of the edge.”

“Edge is kind of in the eye of the beholder. Each person’s edge is different. But what was really important is that if you think of edge computing as an extension of the internet, the edge we really care about is the edge of the last mile network. And nobody was really talking about that.” 

Challenges of creating the report

Originally, the goal was to put out a State of the Edge report every year, but it took 18 months between the first report’s publication and the second. The delay is to ensure that the information provided by Matt and everyone working on the report is properly vetted, and as accurate and useful as possible. And this is all being done by Matt and now just two employees, who all also have day jobs. This is a true passion project for those involved.

“We took a lot of time to have peers in the industry review and evaluate what we were putting out before we published it. And I think the quality report is super high because of that. But it also took a lot of time.”

What’s in the most recent report?

Matt says that this year’s report is twice as good as the first and one of the reasons is because in the report they answer a lot of the questions that people ask about edge all the time. Those questions include: how real is edge? What is being deployed? How much and where are things being deployed? By answering those questions, companies with an interest in investing capital in edge can make much more informed decisions. To answer those questions, Matt hired analysts and researchers who worked to come up with real data and models.

The report also reflects what Matt is excited about – a new form of the internet rearchitected with edge to achieve things we cannot at this time. Matt describes the arc of the internet as a three-act play, and the act we’re in now is one in which we’re moving from humans talking to machines more to machines talking to machines.

“The transformation in the edge industry is moving from people with frothy ideas slapping edge on some old product to make it seem cool to real practitioners deploying real dollars, putting capital to work to build the platforms on which this next generation of compute is going to be built. I’m fond of saying the internet is broken. …There are lots of applications we want to consume or bring about that simply cannot be done with the internet today. And we have to rearchitect it.”

“The real transformation is we are going to have billions and billions and billions of devices that aren’t being looked at by a human that are going to be transmitting data that needs to be analyzed and acted upon in near real-time. We’re moving from a world where the internet needs to function in ones of seconds to a world that it needs to function in tens of milliseconds, ones of milliseconds, and in some cases, microseconds. And that’s just a very different world. And it’s not a billion devices. It’s tens of billions and maybe trillions of devices. It’s a huge transformation.”

State of the Edge merged with LF Edge last month and is now an integral part of the ecosystem. To learn more about the project or join the mailing list, click here.

May 12, 2020

LF Edge Expands Ecosystem with Open Horizon, adds Seven New Members and Reaches Critical Deployment Milestones

By Akraino Edge Stack, Announcement, Baetyl, EdgeX Foundry, Fledge, Home Edge, LF Edge, Open Horizon, Project EVE, State of the Edge

  • Open Horizon, an application and metadata delivery platform, is now part of LF Edge as a Stage 1 (At-Large) Project.
  • New members bring R&D expertise in Telco, Enterprise and Cloud Edge Infrastructure.
  • EdgeX Foundry hits 4.3 million downloads and Akraino R2 delivers 14 validated deployment-ready blueprints.
  • Fledge shares a race car use case optimizing car and driver operations using Google Cloud, Machine Learning and state-of-the-art digital twins and simulators.

SAN FRANCISCO – April 30, 2020 –  LF Edge, an umbrella organization under The Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced continued project momentum with the addition a new project and several technical milestones for EdgeX Foundry, Akraino Edge Stack and Fledge. Additionally, the project welcomes seven new members including CloudBrink, Federated Wireless, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Kaloom, Ori Industries, Tensor Networks and VoerEir to its ecosystem.

Open Horizon, an existing project contributed by IBM, is a platform for managing the service software lifecycle of containerized workloads and related machine learning assets. It enables autonomous management of applications deployed to distributed webscale fleets of edge computing nodes and devices without requiring on-premise administrators.

Edge computing brings computation and data storage closer to where data is created by people, places, and things. Open Horizon simplifies the job of getting the right applications and machine learning onto the right compute devices, and keeps those applications running and updated. It also enables the autonomous management of more than 10,000 edge devices simultaneously – that’s 20 times as many endpoints as in traditional solutions.

“We are thrilled to welcome Open Horizon and new members to the LF Edge ecosystem,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge & IoT, the Linux Foundation. “These additions complement our deployment ready LF Edge open source projects and our growing global ecosystem.”

“LF Edge is bringing together some of the most significant open source efforts in the industry, said Todd Moore, IBM VP Open Technology, “We are excited to contribute the Open Horizon project as this will expand the work with the other projects and companies to create shared approaches, open standards, and common interfaces and APIs.”

Open Horizon joins LF Edge’s other projects including: Akraino Edge Stack, Baetyl,  EdgeX Foundry, Fledge, Home Edge, Project EVE and State of the Edge. These projects support emerging edge applications across areas such as non-traditional video and connected things that require lower latency, and  faster processing and mobility. By forming a software stack that brings the best of cloud, enterprise and telecom, LF Edge helps to unify a fragmented edge market around a common, open vision for the future of the industry.

Since its launch last year, LF Edge projects have met significant milestones including:

  • EdgeX Foundry has hit 4.3 million docker downloads.
  • Akraino Edge Stack (Release 2) has 14 specific Blueprints that have all tested and validated on hardware labs and can be deployed immediately in various industries including Connected Vehicle, AR/VR, Integrated Cloud Native NFV, Network Cloud and Tungsten Fabric and SDN-Enabled Broadband Access.
  • Fledge shares a race car use case optimizing car and driver operations using Google Cloud, Machine Learning and state-of-the-art digital twins and simulators.
  • State of the Edge merged under LF Edge earlier this month and will continue to pave the path as the industry’s first open research program on edge computing. Under the umbrella, State of the Edge will continue its assets including State of the Edge Reports, Open Glossary of Edge Computing and the Edge Computing Landscape.

Support from the Expanding LF Edge Ecosystem

Federated Wireless:

“LF Edge has become a critical point of collaboration for network and enterprise edge innovators in this new cloud-driven IT landscape,” said Kurt Schaubach, CTO, Federated Wireless. “We joined the LF Edge to apply our connectivity and spectrum expertise to helping define the State of the Edge, and are energized by the opportunity to contribute to the establishment of next generation edge compute for the myriad of low latency applications that will soon be part of private 5G networks.”

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI):

“ITRI is one of the world’s leading technology R&D institutions aiming to innovate a better future for society. Founded in 1973, ITRI has played a vital role in transforming Taiwan’s industries from labor-intensive into innovation-driven. We focus on the fields of Smart Living, Quality Health, and Sustainable Environment. Over the years, we also added a focus on 5G, AI, and Edge Computing related research and development. We joined LF Edge to leverage its leadership in these areas and to collaborate with the more than 75 member companies on projects like Akraino Edge Stack.”

Kaloom:

“Kaloom is pleased to join LF Edge to collaborate with the community on developing open, cloud-native networking, management and orchestration for edge deployments” said Suresh Krishnan, chief technology officer, Kaloom.  “We are working on an unified edge solution in order to optimize the use of resources while meeting the exacting performance, space and energy efficiency needs that are posed by edge deployments. We look forward to contributing our expertise in this space and to collaborating with the other members in LF Edge in accelerating the adoption of open source software, hardware and standards that speed up innovation and reduce TCO.”

Ori Industries:

“At Ori, we are fundamentally changing how software interacts with the distributed hardware on mobile operator networks.” said Mahdi Yahya, Founder and CEO, Ori Industries. “We also know that developers can’t provision, deploy and run applications seamlessly on telco infrastructure. We’re looking forward to working closely with the LF Edge community and the wider open-source ecosystem this year, as we turn our attention to developers and opening up access to the distributed, telco edge.”

Tensor Networks:

“Tensor Networks believes in and supports open source. Having an arena free from the risks of IP Infringement to collaborate and develop value which can be accessible to more people and organizations is essential to our efforts. Tensor runs its organization, and develops products on top of Linux.  The visions of LF Edge, where networks and latency are part of open software based service composition and delivery, align with our vision of open, fast, smart, secure, connected, and customer driven opportunities across all industry boundaries.” – Bill Walker, Chief Technology Officer.

VoerEir:

“In our extensive work with industry leaders for NFVI/VIM test and benchmarking,  a need to standardize infrastructure KPIs in Edge computing has gradually become more important,” said Arif  Khan, Co-Founder of VoerEir AB. “This need has made it essential for us to join LF Edge and to initiate the new Feature Project “Kontour” under the Akraino umbrella. We are excited to collaborate with various industry leaders to define, standardize  and measure Edge KPIs.”

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.

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April 30, 2020
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