By Keith Basil, General Manager of Edge, SUSE
This year, we’ve been hearing more about edge computing and its potential. In fact, The Linux Foundation found that “Edge Computing will be 4x larger than cloud and will generate 75% of data worldwide by 2025.” While the edge market is in the early stages of its lifecycle, there is no doubt that there is high expected growth on the horizon. However, what isn’t being discussed enough is the edge use applications that are already here and being used today.
The use cases for edge computing are vast and provide the connective tissue needed to drive transformation in the cloud and beyond. At its most simple level, edge can be defined as anything that falls outside of the traditional data center. If you take this one step further, we have a definition defining framework that breaks that down into three separate categories:
- Near edge, which is closest to data centers and to the hyperscalers and the realm of the telecommunications companies. Here, we see edge solutions that support the global 5G rollout and multi access edge computing services as well as retailers looking to bring applications in store, supporting customer buying or employee functions.
- Far edge is where we see most of the edge opportunities and a tremendous amount of business diversity across commercial, industrial, and public sectors.
- Tiny edge, which is what we consider Industrial Internet of Things, this is where you have devices that are small, lightly resourced, and don’t need a full blown operating system. Within this segment, we find manufacturing or industrial companies deploying edge applications that support predictive maintenance and analytics value to the business.
While there are varying degrees of definitions out there in the market today, the outcomes remain the same. So how is edge computing already transforming today’s cloud native environments?
1. Edge is playing a critical role in the evolution of retail
Business logic is moving closer to the data. Cutting-edge retailers are putting more compute power or enhancing existing computing capabilities at their retail locations to reduce application latency and data movement costs, while enhancing customer shopping experiences. Larger retailers are using the in-store compute power to drive sales during business hours, and business functions such as inventory, traffic analysis and AI/ ML analytics after the storefront closes.
Resiliency and high availability of edge allows retailers to keep transacting and stay-available in disconnected scenarios. For instance, edge computing would allow you to be able to come back up after natural disaster and start doing business while other aspects of infrastructure are down.
A well-designed edge architecture can help retailers maintain their needs of providing an improved customer experiences and implement compute infrastructure that is secure and reliable.
2. Embedded appliances are seeing a desire for easier lifecycle management
By allowing for a more declarative approach to upgrades at all levels of the stack, we can allow for more confidence in the lifecycle management of edge devices.
The cloud native approach to managing edge deployments also allows for the self-healing loop to be fully contained at the edge without needing to have the cloud-based control plane in charge. This means that developers can reduce some of their logic and allow Kubernetes to manage backoff and retries. It also means that the whole stack has better tools for self-healing from top to bottom.
3. Operators are learning Kubernetes and want to reuse their knowledge everywhere
One of the impacts the mass adoption of Kubernetes has had is that we are seeing the workforce prioritize learning it instead of other application orchestration frameworks. This will inevitably lead to a talent shortage followed by a cost increase for more specialized knowledge.
This is not necessarily a bad thing! Since Kubernetes is structured in an open and ecosystem-friendly way, we can take advantage of newly available paradigms, best-practices, and tooling options as they get built.
4. Securing remote locations and devices
Due to the geographically distributed nature of edge devices, physical security is hard (if not impossible) to achieve and there is time to tamper with devices in transit. This means that we need to adopt a “zero-trust” model when it comes to these devices. Typically, this would imply the following:
- using hardware that supports TPM
- base operating system signed and booted with secure boot
- validating a signed software bill of materials (SBOMs)
- ensure network and workload security
Today, organizations are already increasingly adopting edge based security practices as outlined above to stay ahead of cyberattacks. We’re seeing this with retailers securing their systems, government agencies utilizing edge and zero trust and more.
5. Manufacturing benefits from using predictive analytics
Manufacturing companies are looking to implement Industry 4.0 use cases to modernize their infrastructure and increase automation.
Manufacturers are realizing that incorporating predictive analytics can help them be more proactive and cost efficient. For example. a lumber manufacturer could increase the life of saw blades with timely analytics inputs using Edge devices. All this is now possible using Industrial IoT devices that utilize containers to run dynamic workloads and can provide timely inputs using edge compute on the device itself. As manufacturers realize the economic and efficiency benefits this will lead to increased adoption of smart manufacturing methods based on edge computing.
While there is tremendous room for growth for edge computing it’s clear that we are in the middle of an explosion of innovation in edge computing. The diversity and depth of innovation allows us to push applications to where they provide maximum value. This is the edge.
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To hear more about cloud native topics, join the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and the cloud native community at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2022 in Detroit (and virtual) from October 24-28.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keith Basil, Edge General Manager, SUSE
Keith Basil brings over 21 years of hands on experience in cloud and related industries. As the lead growth catalyst, Basil leads product management, marketing, engineering and communications alignment for SUSE’s Edge business unit. Working with the SUSE global customer base, he is also driving development of cloud-native edge solutions that encompass cluster management, heterogeneous architectures, and zero-trust security approaches at scale. He was previously the Vice President of Cloud Native Infrastructure where he drove strategy and management of SUSE Rancher cloud-native products.
Basil is also passionate about the next generation of decentralized cloud computing models. As an advocate in this area, he is working with communication service providers and public sector organizations to establish decentralized cloud infrastructure, applications and new revenue models.
Before Rancher, Basil led product management, positioning, and business strategy for security within Red Hat’s Cloud Platforms business unit. Prior to Red Hat, he was instrumental in the design of a secure, high-performance cloud architecture that provided compute, storage and application hosting services for US public sector civilian agencies and contractors. Basil holds a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies from Norfolk State University.
