A developer-friendly telco edge
Dr Simone Mangiante
19 September 2018
C1 - Public
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Why edge computing – not just because of lower latencyEvidence: Companies embracing
edge computing:
• Vodafone
• Netflix
• Amazon
• Microsoft
• CDNs like Akamai
• SAP
• GE Digital
• Dell
• HPE
• Toyota
• BMW
• NTT, NTT DoCoMo
• AT&T
• Deutsche Telekom
• CMCC
• … 2
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Many use cases are under test
Examples
1. Interactive mobile gaming: enhanced gaming, AR gaming
2. AR on the go: consumer market, enterprise field services
3. 360-video delivery with bandwidth reduction over radio
4. Automotive: V2X application servers
5. Automotive: HD real-time detailed lane level maps
6. Automotive: tele-operated driving
7. Automotive: AI/ML-assisted driver monitoring
8. Wearable cognitive assistance
9. IoT edge analytics
10. Private LTE networks with MEC
11. Machine vision in industry 4.0
12. Security shield at telco edge nodes
13. Acceleration of existing enterprise apps
14. And more: Collaborative robots, etc.
Pothole detector
Deer detector
Aldenhoven
Testing
Center (DE)Tests provide proof points for app sensitivity to latency, application
software architectures, MEC platforms, customer readiness etc.
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Various activities are relevant for the ‘edge’ – some examples onlyStandardisation, industry initiatives, and open source
ETSI MEC
• Phase 1 completed, Phase 2 - ongoing
Focus areas
• Requirements and use cases
• Reference architecture
• Some MEC API specifications
• Application life cycle management
• Integration with NFV
• Lawful intercept
• Etc.
ONF, CORD
Focus areas
• Fabric
• P4-based SDN
• Open, disaggregated transport network
• Open switch operating system (Stratum)
• Broadband access
• LTE+/5G Edge
• Network edge-as-a-service
OpenFog Consortium
• Framework architecture
• Less telco-centric
BBF
TMF
OpenStack
• Are aware of edge
• About management of
many edge nodes
Others
• OpenStack++ from Carnegie
Mellon
• MobileEdgeX: announcing their
Edge PaaS layer in Berlin
• Akraino
• ONAP
• Several others !
OEC
• Focus on applications and developer
friendly interfaces, APIs
• Outdoor urban testbed “Living Edge Lab”
• OEC work with ETSI ISG MEC
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The edge is developing – with and without telco companiesThe location of the ‘edge’ is relative
Move straight to the edge; start over the top
Driven by needs of IoT.
Leveraging IoT gateways
Typically ensure good
integration of ‘edge’ with own
cloud
- E.g. GE Predix with Cloud
Foundry
IoT Industry Players Content Delivery NWs Hyperscalers Colocation Providers
Classic CDNs have globally distributed compute and networking facilities
Example: Akamai
Have an existing enterprise
customer base.
- Edge nodes in 130 countries
- More than 200,000 servers
- More than 1,500 locations
Support advanced services at
edge nodes
Move beyond the huge cloud datacenters via own CDNs, edge nodes
Edge nodes support functions
beyond caching.
- Amazon Cloud Front,
Lambda@Edge
- Microsoft Azure CDN
- Google: see map below
Fill the gap between enterprises and hyperscalers and expand
Create a fast speed ramp to
hyperscalers.
“Location, location, location”
Consider real estate as key.
Expansion plans
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Solutions to answer the questions
Cross-industry projects, open edge computing labs
(e.g. Living Edge Lab Pittsburgh, part of OEC)
Know your customer issue: very different industries
Solution: joint consortia with telco industry
• Automotive: 5GAA, AECC
• VR streaming: ?
• Wearable cognitive assistance: ?
• Healthcare: ?
• Smart manufacturing: 5G-ACIA
Joint telco edge/cloud propositions with
key cloud service providers to test the market
Challenge For Telcos: Successful Go-To-Market + Leveraging Cloud + NFV
About the customers
Who are the potential B2B customers?
• Enterprises from different industries, cloud service
providers, CDNs
What services can be offered to such customers?
• Intelligent ULL-routing to 3rd party edge nodes
• Edge IaaS, Edge PaaS, Edge SaaS
How to achieve sufficient footprint for multi-
national enterprises?
How to shape enterprise developer touchpoints?
Which (micro) services provide value at the edge?
Success = Meeting the needs of cloud-minded customers whilst achieving synergies by
leveraging telco NFV/SDN technologies already in the pipeline
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Example challenge 1: edge as part of distributed cloudPublic/Private Cloud Integration Approaches
VMwareAWS OpenStackAzureNetwork: NFVI, VIM
PaaS, cloud-native & legacy apps, container mgmt & orchestration, cloud mgmt
AWS Greengrass
Edge services(e.g. ETSI MEC)
PaaS: NFV-style (on-boarding, orchestration, DevOps)
Device
Public, private clouds
Examples:
Example:
Telco network, telco cloud,
remote edge cloud, MEC node
(stationary) cloudlet (anywhere)
• IoT gateway, Raspberry Pi
• Moving cloudlet
OpenStack-based APIs
Examples
And other approaches…
Most useful approaches tbd
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Example challenge 2: cross-operator nodes, services and APIs
…..
Description
• Assumption
o Network-hosted (micro)services for vertical
industries, e.g. 360 streaming transformation
• Common capability exposure to vertical communities
(e.g. AR/VR industry)
1. Common APIs to edge-hosted (micro)services
2. Common developer tools
3. Common service registry (catalogue)
4. Common node and (micro)services discovery
• How: e.g. via multi-carrier common edge node scheme
Benefits
• Enables greater (critical) mass
• Less fragmentation towards developers
• Greater “coverage” for enterprises/partners
• Common front-end towards developers / hyperscalers
• More PaaS-like interface to developers
Microservice 1Microservice 2 Microservice 2
Microservice 1
Common API Exposure System in Cloud
e.g. telco cloud, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure,
Global edge node discovery, accounting, …
360,
AR,
VR,
Mixed reality
Automotive Gaming
Other operator
Cloud Service Providers, …
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Programming model with edge applicationsCommon, friendly developer environment and tools
App client
• Runs in end user devices
• Examples:
o Sensor
o In-car dashboard
App@Edge (ME app)
• Might be done in cloud-
native architecture
• Can access micro-
services at the edge
cloud via
o APIs (REST)
o Message bus
interfaces
App@Cloud
• Deployed in private or public cloud
• Communicates with App@Edge or App client
• Represents back-end services
App client App@Edge App@CloudAPIs APIs
API gateway
Micro-services
Cloud servicesMEC services
Private/public cloudEdge Cloud
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Exposure of Edge Services and APIs to Applications Adds ValueSupports edge business models: move from IaaS to PaaS and FaaS/SaaS
• MEC services towards edge apps
• Micro-services for vertical industries
(e.g. content distribution)
Edge cloud services
1) As per standards
• Radio Network
Information Service
• Bandwidth Management
Service
• Location Service
• Exposed to edge
applications
• APIs standardised in
ETSI ISG MEC
2) As per agreement
• E.g. industry consortium
3) Proprietary
Micro-services for vertical industries, e.g.
• Edge-based algorithms for 360-degree/VR streaming
• Protocol translations, filtering
• Multicast services, …
• Cloud service
e.g. AI, ML, …
as per
- Microsoft Azure, -
- Amazon AWS,
- GE Predix, …
Edge Cloud Sensors, devices Private/public cloud
App@Client App@Edge App@CloudAPI API
MEC servicesMicro-services
Cloud services
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Devices Edge Main Cloud
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/iot/sdk/
[2] https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/
[3] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/programming-model-v2.html
AWS services,
AWS Lambda[3]AWS Greengrass[2]AWS IoT Device SDK[1]
AWS Lambda• A compute service
• No need to manage servers /
instances
• Scales automatically
AWS Greengrass Core• Greengrass Core runtime enables AWS
Lambda, messaging, device shadows,
security
• 3rd party code (functions) runs at the
network edge
• Interacts directly with AWS cloud and
works locally
• Nokia, Saguna and others integrate
Greengrass on MEC platforms
AWS IoT Device SDK• Seamless and secure connection to
the AWS ecosystem
• Open source libraries, multiple
languages supported (C, Java,
Javascript, Python, Android, iOS, …)
• Device shadows (= digital twins)
Example: programming at the edge with AWS
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We need to keep the edge cloud interface to developers simple!
Publiccloud
IoT
Gateway
Privatecloud
uCPE
Cellular
module
Telco 2
Telco 1
DeveloperExperience
Telco cloud 1
Telco cloud 2
IoT platform
Edge cloud 2
uCPE, vCPE, CORD
On-premises
MEC
?
Edge cloud 1
Inte
rfa
ce
Developers
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Otherwise, the challenge for customers increases
• How do I work with:
o GE Predix? SAP Edge? Azure IoT Edge,
AWS Greengrass? …
o Operator 1 Edge cloud?
o Operator 2 Edge cloud?
• How do I on-board and deploy apps?
• How shall I do DevOps for the Edge?
• Can I deploy across edges of telco carriers?
• Can my edge application code use the same APIs across telco service providers?
• Is the functionality of edge micro-services equivalent across different carriers?
• Do I need to deal with multiple, different edge development SDKs?
Required:
Hide complexity from
1. ‘Lack of coverage’ by EC infrastructure
2. Lack of edge-2-edge cloud interworking
3. Different EC app on-boarding
mechanisms
4. Different EC app management solutions
5. Different EC APIs across telcos
6. Different EC DevOps mechanisms
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A single pane of view for developers: main cloud and edge cloudA combination of cloud and edge computing to deploy next generation edge-aware applications
Ability to:
• Deploy an application across multi-clouds, including
edge cloud: e.g. Vodafone Edge + AWS
• Select to which cloud to deploy:
– Private cloud
– Public cloud
– Operator edge cloud
• Manage all application parts deployed to different
clouds from a single management console.
• Migrate application code from data center to
selected edge clouds
Source: http://docs-3x.cliqr.com/display/MAN/Deployment+Environments
Vodafone A9 Edge Cloud
Volkswagen Private Cloud
IBM IoT Platform, London
IBM Softlayer/Bluemix Frankfurt
Single pane
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Conclusion
• Telco and IT worlds are different
• Developers belong to IT
• Edge computing requires a different
programming model
• For a successful edge computing
proposition, we need to engage with
developers from the beginning and
learn from them
• Educational sessions
• Hackathons
• Proof of Concepts
• API standardisation
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