Azure Edge Zones, which Microsoft says will be available in June 2020, are local extensions of Azure compute, storage, and services for use cases requiring low latency . AT&T is among the first service providers to offer Azure Edge Zones.
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Io'T Solutions Vary by Type of Edge Computing Used
Internet of things use case profiles vary on several dimensions, including power levels of the devices, network range, data rates, latency requirements and availability (how mission critical and therefore how reliable the solution must be). They also vary with the type of edge computing used.
Beyond that, the cost of the solution also matters so the use of licensed or unlicensed spectrum plays a part in the overall cost of a deployed solution.
Generally speaking, off-premises edge computing will require networks with what--in an IoT scenario--would be considered “long range” reach, basically covering distances between a kilometer to 10 km. Short range refers to indoor or local area communications such as supplied by Wi-Fi, and is best suited to computing on the actual devices, or on servers located on the premises.
source: Maravedis, Rethink Research
As always in the connectivity business, no one access solution is best for every use case.
Cloud Giants Collaborate for Routing Security
Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Azion, Cloudflare, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix are working together to ensure routing security, especially to prevent spoofing.
Friday, March 20, 2020
What Does "Digital Transformation" Mean?
Talking about the information technology business, Tom Siebel, C3.ai CEO, says that “when I got involved, about 1980, it was a $50 billion business worldwide.”
Some 40 years later, “it's a three and a half trillion dollar business with predictions that, in five years it will be a $9 trillion business,” he says. Even adjusting for inflation between 1980 and 2020, that represents an order of magnitude growth over 40 years. In real terms, the 1980 spending would represent about $157 billion in 2020.
Without question, firms and organizations now use much more computing and information technology than they used to, and so do consumers. Modern applications virtually could not operate without cloud computing, for example. Recommendation engines could not operate without artificial intelligence or machine learning or ability to mine insights from big data.
Also, most products these days make use of information technology as a value-added part of the user experience. In some cases, IT is an essential and core part of the user experience. That is part of the reason the phrase "digital transformation" is in vogue.
In a real sense, the term refers to the application of cloud computing, big data, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence to all business operations.
Beyond that, few of us could actually define what digital transformation means, beyond the purely functional definition of business processes enhanced by use of cloud computing, big data, IoT and AI in virtually every respect.
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Nokia Addes Edge Computing Support to Global WING IoT Managed Service
Nokia has announced that it is adding 5G and edge computing support capabilities to its Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) managed service.
AT&T will be using Nokia’s Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) for enterprise IoT customers. The deal includes the core network, dedicated IoT operations, billing, security, and data analytics.
Wing is expected to be available in more than 20 countries by the first quarter of 2020. That means the company’s enterprise IoT customers will be able to manage connectivity across all those networks.
Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) is a cloud-native, globally-distributed, IoT core network managed service compatible with 3G, 4G, NB-IoT access networks, allowing operators to accelerate time-to-market, at lower costs and risk,
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sv-HnerxhXc" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The managed service includes four initial offerings, two horizontal and two vertical, for agriculture, livestock management, logistics and asset management.
- Smart Agriculture as-a-Service: Sensors capture environmental, soil and crop data that is then analyzed to provide insights that help farmers manage crops more effectively, potentially saving costs on irrigation, pesticides and fertilizers.
- Livestock Management as-a-Service: Tracking devices and biosensors monitor animal health and welfare to provide ranchers with early alerts if abnormalities are detected, protecting valuable livestock and improving yields.
- Logistics as-a-Service: IoT sensors enable tracking of the global movement and condition of goods through the complete supply chain to help enterprises instantly identify incidents and even predict future events to optimize delivery and logistics process efficiency.
- Asset Management as-a-Service: Connecting products anywhere in the world enables their status and performance to be monitored centrally, helping enterprises provide a better service to their business and consumer customers.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
IoT, Edge Computing Partnerships Still Mostly Dumb Pipe?
At least so far, the value of an IoT partnership or edge computing partnership between connectivity providers and hyperscale cloud computing firms follows the typical pattern: access supplied by the telco; services and apps by the partner.
To be sure, that is not the only conceivable role a service provider can play. In some cases, telcos might actually seek to create applications and services as well.
Still, so far, IoT and edge computing partnerships tend to be new examples of dumb pipe roles for connectivity providers, with a possible incremental boost to real estate revenue, when telco facilities are used as edge data centers.
Google’s Global Mobile Edge Cloud program aims to create a portfolio and marketplace of 5G solutions built jointly with telecommunications companies; an open cloud platform for developing these network-centric applications; and a global distributed edge for optimally deploying these solutions, Google Cloud says.
Verizon's partnership with AWS for the new Wavelengths service is a similar sort of deal, where Verizon supplies the edge real estate and AWS supplies the computing service.
A collaboration with AT&T is part of the Mobile Edge Cloud effort, where AT&T supplies the network while Google Cloud supplies the computing functions.
That might strike you as yet another instance of telcos supplying connectivity (dumb pipe) while somebody else supplies the applications. Realists might say that is about as good as it gets, in many cases.
Friday, March 13, 2020
Cloudflare Building Edge Data Centers
Cloudflare, which helps companies make their web services run faster and be more secure – and which more recently started to use its global data center network to also provide cloud computing services – said it would expand the network in the US with three dozen new locations. Shortly thereafter, the company said it would add even more locations in the US – about the same amount as in the first announcement.
It will use Vapor IO and EdgeMicro for edge computing locations. All the locations, Vapor and EdgeMicro, will run Cloudflare’s full set of services.
Today, Cloudflare says it is within 100 milliseconds of 95 percent of the world's population, or 99 percent if you look at internet users in the developed world,” said Nitin Rao, head of global infrastructure at Cloudflare.
EdgeMicro suggests the new edge deployments show initial roundtrip statistics of between 50 and 75 milliseconds. The company believes it can get down to sub-20, maybe even sub-10 milliseconds.
Each remotely-managed Vapor site has between 150kW and 180kW of power capacity across high-density 35kW racks. EdgeMicro says most of its clients want 8kW to 10kW per rack, and the Cloudflare deployment is smaller than that.
Telefónica and Idrica Partner for Water Service IoT Services
Telefónica and Idrica, a company specializing in “digital transformation of water cycle management,” have signed a global partnership agreement to provide services to companies in the water sector, focused on operations management and maintenance.
The agreement includes the development of solutions supported by NB-IoT, LTE-M and 5G networks. The solution allows companies to monitor real-time information on all their infrastructures and processes in one single place and automate recurring tasks, Telefónica says.
As with most such partnerships, Telefónica is likely to supply the connections, Idrica the software and hardware for internet of things operations. Telefónica says it supplies more than 30 million IoT connections worldwide.
What remains to be seen, as always, is the value Telefónica can bring, and how that translates into revenue for Telefónica. Connection revenue alone is not expected to be a huge revenue generator. Where early on it seemed IoT connections would generate US $1 to $2 per month per device, prices already have dropped to a bit over $1 in many cases, and some IoT connections might already be half of that.
source: Jasper
source: Jasper
It also supplies Kite, an in-house solution to manage IoT devices with a dedicated network infrastructure globally deployed and hosted in the cloud.
Since November 2019, IoT, big data, cloud and security services sold by Telefónica are part of Telefónica Tech, the new unit with which Telefónica wants to boost the growth of these new digital businesses.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
42 Billion IoT Devices in Use by 2025?
The number of devices connected to the Internet, including the machines, sensors, and cameras that make up the Internet of Things (IoT) will reach 41.6 billion by about 2025, IDC predicts.
Those connected IoT devices will generate 79.4 zettabytes (ZB) of data in 2025.
Some might call that forecast optimistic or aggressive, but Cisco believes IoT devices could represent as much as half of all connected devices, while driving about six percent of traffic, by about 2022.
IDC projects that the amount of data created by connected IoT devices will see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.7 percent to 2025. Notably, most of the data will be generated by video surveillance appliances in the near term, growing to include industrial and medical devices over time.
While the video surveillance category will drive a large share of the IoT data created, the industrial and automotive category will see the fastest data growth rates over the forecast period with a compound annual growth rate of 60 percent, IDC estimates.
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Will Edge Computing Enable Lower-Cost Devices?
It is too early to say for sure, but someday, as edge computing becomes about as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi now is, it might be possible to design lower-cost smartphones that derive much of their functionality from edge computing facilities rather than from internal firmware. That is one way the spiraling cost of leading-edge phones could be blunted.
Also, edge support for smartphones, if it allowed the use of phone equivalents of thin client computers, might prove one of the most-important use of edge computing capabilities for mobile service providers, much as 5G and virtualization of network cores is important for service providers as a way of radically lower cost per bit.
If past is prologue, it might take decades for the edge computing fabric to become ubiquitous enough to allow that to happen.
The idea is not especially new, having been dubbed by Sun Microsystems network computing back about 1984. The idea was that what we now call distributed computing or cloud computing would allow devices to be “thin” clients drawing much of their compute from a server.
In a client-server environment that meant a lower-cost “sort of dumb” terminal instead of a personal computer., mimicing the dumb terminals of the mainframe era. It might seem crazy now, but in the 1970s there were whole word processing built on the use of mainframes and dumb terminals, built to support that single function.
In 1983, when I was a reporter at a Gannett newspaper, I believe we used the Atex system for composing stories, featuring dumb terminals wired to a mainframe.
Ironically, though the concept never really caught on in terms of devices--which remained smart, with local computing resources-- the idea of using centralized computing resources was common in the client-server era as well as in the cloud computing era.
It may remain equally powerful in the coming era of edge computing, ambient computing or whatever other term eventually emerges. But the difference might be--once again--the issue of how much capability the client device must possess to supply functionality.
There is at least some hope that, with widespread edge computing with very-low latency, some functions resident on the device can be omitted, with reliance being on the edge computing fabric for those functions.
De
At least in principle, that would mean the ability to create functional devices available at lower cost. In the last two computing eras--whether centralized or distributed--use of remote servers has become a foundational assumption.
It has been true for possibly a decade that smartphones have gotten so advanced it has become hard to create some big new feature to drive widespread device replacement beyond normal wear and tear cycles. Some believe foldables or 5G could prove the foundation for an upsurge of innovation and features.
At least initially, device cost will be a limiting issue, as foldables might cost as much as $2000 each, while 5G devices could easily cost $1200 each. Over time, costs will drop, of course. But lower cost is key to widespread deployment.
Tier-One Mobile Operators Plan Interoperable Edge Computing Platform
China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, EE, KDDI, Orange, Singtel, SK Telecom, Telefonica and TIM have joined forces, with the support of the GSMA, to develop an interoperable platform to make edge compute capabilities widely and easily available.
The platform to be developed in 2020, will make local operator assets and capabilities, such as latency, compute and storage available to application developers and software vendors enabling them to fulfil the needs of enterprise clients, GSMA says.
As always, several different business models are feasible, ranging from relatively simple common interfaces and management systems across carrier domains. Colocation is possible.
In other cases actual computing as a service, available from multiple carriers across the globe, might be available.
The platform will be deployed across multiple markets in Europe and progressively extended to other operators and geographies to achieve global reach, GSMA says.
Interoperability across multiple service provider domains is an important feature for many services aimed at enterprises. What is a bit unclear at the moment is whether the effort yields higher order or lower order interoperability.
At lower orders of interop enterprise customers might have assurances that their services work across domain boundaries. At higher levels perhaps the computing functions are standardized across domains.
Other entities are developing edge compute capabilities as well, including hyperscale computing giants, tower companies and others. Much may hinge on what features customers seek, and whether a relative handful of hyperscale platforms choose to colocate.
Some enterprises will want to rent compute cycles or storage, but run their own apps. Hosted services might work.
Others will want a local version of whichever hyperscale compute environment they already use. In such cases, the edge computing must include the relevant hyperscale platform. The same holds for enterprises that are using more than one compute platform at the edge, or a mix of hyperscale platforms across the enterprise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)