LF Edge Builds Momentum with New Members, Blueprints as Community Works Toward Interoperability for Open Edge Computing

New Open Edge Demos from Akraino and Project EVE to Debut at Open Networking Summit North America

OPEN NETWORKING SUMMIT, SAN JOSE, Calif., April 2, 2019 – LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced growing momentum with new blueprints from Akraino Edge Stack and four new general members including Alef Mobitech Inc., HarmonyCloud Inc., Section, and Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. The Akraino blueprints will debut at the Linux Foundation’s Open Networking Summit (ONS) on April 3-5 in San Jose.

LF Edge is comprised of projects that will support emerging edge applications in the area of non-traditional video and connected things that require lower latency, faster processing and mobility. Akraino, a project creating an open source software stack that supports high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications, is marking a technical milestone with eight blueprint families with more than 19 under development to support a variety of edge use cases. The Akraino community tests and validates the blueprints on real hardware labs supported by users and community members. The first release of Akraino is scheduled for Q2 2019 and will include several validated blueprints.

“LF Edge hit the ground running when we launched in January,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, The Linux Foundation. “Our collaboration for edge solutions across multiple industries in IoT, Enterprise, Telecom and Cloud has been very well received by the community.”

In addition, EdgeX Foundry, which enables an ecosystem of plug-and-play components to unify the IoT edge computing marketplace, is preparing “Edinburgh,” its fifth code release for Spring 2019 that will include binary data support, automated performance and security testing, new device services and a certification program. EdgeX Foundry will be on-site at Hannover Messe from April 1-5 in Germany with a building automation demo at the Dell Technologies booth (Hall 6, Stand C40). The demo will highlight the EdgeX framework’s ability to bring together a real-world, smart flexible office space environment based on components from a variety of vendors leveraging numerous connectivity standards, operating systems and hardware types.

Showcasing the Edge at Open Networking Summit (ONS)

LF Edge will make its debut with a booth on-site and several speaking engagements at ONS on April 3-5 in San Jose. The booth will feature demos from Akraino that showcase the emerging  blueprints for network cloud integration and industrial automation. Additionally, Project EVE will display a model wind turbine that demonstrates EdgeX Foundry technology for industrial IoT.

Experts from the LF Edge community will also present a range of related sessions as part of “The New Edge” track. Key sessions include:

• Edge Open Source Synergy to Deliver Value-added End-to-end Services, Wednesday, April 3 at 5:10 PM – LF Edge members Ram Krishan, VMware; Kandan Kathirvel, AT&T; Srinivasa Rao Addepalli, Intel; Tina Tsou, Arm; and Rolf Muralt, MobiledgeX will discuss key open source efforts such as ONAP, Cloud Native Kubernetes, Mobile TIP Edge Application Developer Project Group and MobiledgeX, LF Edge, and Akraino.
• Your Path to Edge Computing – Akraino Edge Stack, Thursday, April 4 at 5 PM – Tapio Tallgren, Nokia; Kandan Kathirvel, AT&T; and Tina Tsou, Arm will present edge use cases for Akraino, Akraino blueprints and how users can engage and contribute to the community.
• Edge Computing League – LF Edge Umbrella, Friday, April 5 at 11:10 AM – Tina Tsou, Arm; MyeonGi Jong, Samsung; Roman Shaposhnik, Zededa; Kandan Kathirvel, AT&T; and Janko Isidorovic, Mainflux, will discuss how edge use cases are being addressed to satisfy industry needs, the collaboration between LF Edge projects and how to contribute to each project.

For more information about other LF Edge activities or sessions at ONS, click here.  The full line-up of ONS conference sessions can be found here.

Background On New LF Edge Members

LF Edge welcomes Alef Mobitech Inc., Harmony Cloud, Marvell, and Section as new general members working together to make it easy to quickly build, deploy, run, and scale edge computing solutions. These organizations join more than 60 founding member companies that broadly represent the edge computing and IoT landscape providing products and services supporting analytics, telecom, visualization, sensors, security and manageability, cloud and enterprise, among others.

Members will support LF Edge projects including Home Edge, a hub for real-time data collected through smart home devices; Project EVE, a new agnostic standard edge architecture; Open Glossary of Edge Computing, a freely-licensed collection that seeks to capture the fast-changing lexicon of edge computing; as well as Akraino Edge Stack and EdgeX Foundry.

LF Edge is making significant progress since its launch in January with almost 80 members from around the world joining face-to-face technical steering committee and board meetings at ONS to align on the LF Edge mission and project goals, develop working groups and identify opportunities across key functional areas. Additional information about how to join LF Edge or any of the projects can be found at https://www.lfedge.org/.

Support From New Members

“Together, the LF Edge has the opportunity to rewrite the definition of the Internet … at the edge,” said Ganesh Sundaram, CEO of Alef Mobitech Inc. “We are extremely excited to be joining the LF Edge and working with the entire edge ecosystem. With the proof of our live deployments at the edge, we are committed to creating edge enhanced and edge native applications. The future of applications is being written in front of us and, with the LF Edge, we will be the writers!”

“Edge computing, together with technologies like 5G, AI and IoT, will help build the infrastructure of a connected smart world,” said Yiqun Ding, CTO of HarmonyCloud. “A whole new generation of applications such as self-driving cars, AR/VR, and smart home will benefit from such a low-latency infrastructure. Harmony Cloud is a long-time open source contributor and solution provider of cloud computing and edge computing. By joining LF Edge, we are pleased to join this industry collaboration and accelerate the development and innovation of edge computing software and its ecosystem.”

“As a leading provider of  innovative compute networking and security solutions for the edge, cloud, 5G and the enterprise, we are excited to be a member of the LF Edge,” said Raj Singh, senior vice president and general manager of the Infrastructure Processor Group at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. “We understand and support open source industry initiatives for emerging requirements of  edge computing and 5G networks. We look forward to further industry collaborations to provide LF Edge open source solutions.”

“As a software provider in the edge computing ecosystem, one of our biggest challenges is educating software engineers on how to build for increasingly distributed architectures,” said Daniel Bartholomew, CTO of Section. “We see LF Edge playing a fundamental role in defining hardware and software standards that will accelerate adoption and innovation far beyond what we can imagine today.”

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.

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