How to Enable Intelligent Edge Services and Applications

Organizations need the support of an ecosystem partnership that helps developers bridge the gap between the cloud and edge development environments.?

The edge is completely transforming the way organizations operate in a connected world. As organizations look to accelerate transformation, they’re driving innovation with 5G and IoT, deploying edge services and applications. At the same time, businesses are implementing and further integrating AI and analytics capabilities into new edge use cases.?

Businesses are also exploring the power of digital twins to capture the behavior of physical devices and services. Digital twins require edge capabilities to process and analyze data to reduce latency constraints, and help to centralize infrastructure and IT.

Ronald van Loon is an Intel Influencer and attended the Intel Innovation Event 2021 to discover more about the latest trends and developments in artificial intelligence (AI), edge, cloud, and 5G.?

Developers and system providers need the tools, support, software frameworks, and reference frameworks to help them reduce the complexities of optimizing and delivering edge services and intelligent applications.

Edge computing infrastructures enable edge-native applications that are revolutionizing industry-wide cases across healthcare, entertainment, manufacturing, and much more.?

Developer Challenges

From the perspective of developers, edge computing software solutions can be built using a cloud-native software framework. But unlike the cloud environment, there is no edge software solution that can be built once and deployed on any edge platform. Likewise, there isn’t an edge software solution that can be built once and deployed on any edge location.?

The main challenge is the diversity of edge computing platforms in two ways:

1. Diverse hardware
2. The variety of edge deployment location

The challenge for software developers is creating a software solution that can be deployed on any edge platform and deployed on any edge location. This is what Intel is trying to showcase and achieve at their Intel Innovation Event 2021. They are trying to help developers and solution providers achieve their goals by bridging the gap between the cloud and the edge using tools and software frameworks with reference frameworks to reduce hardware complexities and optimize their solutions for different hardware capabilities.?

Developers can build services for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), or IoT retail and health, and they can choose edge deployment location based on service requirements such as:

• Reducing latency
• Storage handling
• Administer privacy policies for managing data at the edge

They can simultaneously factor in provisioning models depending on who is providing the services, such as a telco, enterprise, or a new player.?

Basically, software developers have to deal with the complexities of networks, hardware, and diverse service requirements depending on the edge location.?

Edge Use Cases Across Industries

There are many exciting industry-wide use case innovations for edge implementations:?

• Smart city developments, like road and traffic management at high dentistry intersections.
• Factory automation, like industry 4.0 defect detection.
• Telepathology solutions in healthcare, such as automated imaging, analytics, and telehealth edge cases.?

For a detailed example, let’s discuss immersive media for entertainment and education. This reference implementation constructs a 360° video from cameras streaming video from 5G or wifi. The video that captured different viewing angles is ingested at the edge in real-time. Simultaneously in real-time, a 360° video is constructed at the edge as well.?

By using analytics on the 360° video frames, insights are extracted on different scenes from the video. So if the video footage is of a sporting event, analytics will display overlay text on critical scenes. After that, the end-user receives the 360° video containing the analytics insights. The end-user could use a VR headset or their device, like a smartphone, and can be entertained in an immersive and interactive experience where they can decide the field of view that’s most interesting for them.

What does this mean for developers? Well, as a developer, you can take this reference information and build your own applications and services. For example, a travel company that needs entertaining tourist videos can create immersive sightseeing videos for people to interact with. Another service example is for industrial applications such as remotely monitoring equipment and providing on-site instructions to identify potential defects in equipment.?

It can even be used for entertainment at a sporting event where people can become remote spectators or even receive snapshots or videos of essential scenes when physically attending the event. When we think about a world where remote education is more commonplace, students can tour remote lab sessions and interact using a 360° point of view.?

Why Developers Need Reference Information

Developers can build many different solutions across industries using reference information.?

For example, Intel has a developer catalog that contains resources that makes it simple to find edge reference solutions, like the use cases and applications across smart cities, healthcare, entertainment, and industrial that was previously mentioned.?

It has all the software information related to AI, analytics, and edge computing, in addition to optimization tools and software packages that help organizations save time and money for deployments.?

A Look into Digital Twins and the Edge

As organizations roll out new edge services and applications, digital twins give organizations a greater understanding of complex environments and the interactions between systems, devices, and processes.?

Digital twins are digital replications of physical environments and they model factories, cities, or stadiums, like in our industry case examples. Digital twins bring together disparate data from IoT devices for rapid processing so businesses can make simulations that help to enhance services and applications using real-time data. Essentially, multiple IT and OT systems can connect and communicate.?

Digital twins enhance analytics capabilities because you can monitor how data interacts across systems and supports business strategies. In addition, you can implement machine learning and AI capabilities to further build and enhance models and make improvements across the infrastructure. ?

Enhance Edge Capabilities with Ecosystem Partnerships?

Organizations can bridge the gap between cloud and edge by partnering with organizations that offer software and reference frameworks that help developers build modern services and applications.

This helps developers overcome the challenges they face when it comes to networks, hardware, and the diversity of service requirements for edge locations.

As organizations explore and build edge services and applications and create digital twins to monitor their infrastructures and environments, they can be supported by partner organizations that can help them navigate the complexities of edge solutions.

For more information about cloud, edge, digital twins, IoT, and AI be sure to check out the Intel Innovation Event 2021. (This article was sponsored by Intel)