Bringing Together Edge Ecosystems

Eight years ago, I was at a Retail company and was putting together strategies for moving compute out of stores to consolidate all on the cloud in an effort to simplify IT infrastructure and support. My first workloads to move were data storage and media assets. Next up, we started looking at how to move point of sale and our loss prevention systems. This is where we ran into issues and I started questioning the “all in the cloud” strategy. Moving video and point of sale to the cloud created more issues than they solved. The issues with bandwidth availability, privacy rules in European countries and lack of a local system to provide point of sale capabilities when (not if) the internet connection failed in the store caused my team to rethink the removal of on-premise architectures. Back then, there were no real solutions or even best practices documented for allowing compute to happen at any location based on need.

Three years ago, I joined Intel at a time when the company was talking about growth of “the edge”. While I believed that more compute would be pushed to the “edges”, I also believed that the ecosystem still had a tool deficiency. It was encouraging to see that Intel had a long-term commitment to change the ecosystem through enabling partners with great tools to solve issues around IT infrastructure support for systems at the edge. The company launched the “Open Retail Initiative” to create awareness around this issue starting with a vertical focused approach to pull large and small technology partners into an initiative that aspired to solve edge architectural issues at scale. Edge computing is now synonymous with IOT and Gartner claims that by 2022, 50% of Enterprise data will be created at the edge. 

As part of our edge aspirations, this week, Intel is working with IBM to drive edge innovation that combines technology, tools and programs designed to accelerate time to insights and actions with security, performance and continuous operations. The IBM Edge Application Manager built on Red Hat OpenShift, LF Edge's Open Horizon and Intel technology is an autonomous management solution designed to enable AI, analytics and IoT enterprise workloads to be deployed and remotely managed, delivering real-time analysis and insight at scale.

The IBM Edge Ecosystem enables a broad set of providers to help enterprises capture the opportunities of edge computing with a variety of solutions built upon IBM’s technology. Intel is infusing its compute performance and security along with the IBM Edge Application Manager. The growth of edge solutions is immense, and developers can respond to the market needs backed by edge management from IBM that is fine-tuned for Intel’s edge to cloud architecture. Modern architectures must support compute to happen where most effective. The choice on where is the best place to gather and compute data should be made by the unique requirements of each customer and with new tools IBM and Intel can meet the customer where they want to be, whether it is at the edge or in the cloud.

Developers are challenged with creating a unique experience to the end user. With Intel and edge computing solutions from IBM, edge devices are interactive and responsive to the rigorous demands – people want their experience to be custom, responsive and secure and they want it timely. Companies want to control that experience to be pleasant for the end user while maintaining security and business continuity. The IBM and Intel collaboration is built on the foundation of standards and scale that reach into many usages seen in vertical markets.

Banking and retail are two verticals experiencing tremendous growth, driven by addressing customer needs with a custom and secure experience. To help accelerate offerings, IBM has joined the Open Retail Initiative (ORI), a collaborative effort by Intel and other top technology companies who believe that open accessible solutions will accelerate iteration, flexibility, and innovation at scale. This collaboration will help re-imagine the possibilities in technology and accelerate innovation across the retail and banking industries.

"The convergence of 5G, Edge computing and AI is sparking a whole new level of innovation”, says Evaristus Mainsah, General Manager, IBM Cloud Pak Ecosystem, “and this in turn will enable and fuel a broad ecosystem of providers to co-create solutions for a growing set of edge opportunities. We are excited about the value that our collaboration with Intel can bring to our joint partners and clients needing Intel enabled edge solutions to deploy apps and analytics at the edge."

To accelerate the development of edge innovation, IBM is collaborating with Intel to leverage Secure Device Onboard (SDO) that provides a fast and more secure way to onboard any device to any device management system at scale. By using IBM’s expertise and Intel’s on-boarding process, developers can innovate and run anywhere that is backed by IBM and Intel and designed for scale and variability that can run anywhere. 

Join Intel on this journey of providing interactive and Intelligent edge solutions to the market. Learn more about the Open Retail Initiative here: ORI

Read the blog from Evaristus Mainsah announcing IBM Edge ecosystem here: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/business-partners/join-the-edge-ecosystem/