We are delighted to announce that Section has joined LF Edge, an umbrella organization within The Linux Foundation dedicated to fostering collaboration around edge computing. We join other edge industry leaders in helping to create a common framework for hardware and software standards and be at the vanguard of the development of best practices that will ensure robust innovation in the edge compute ecosystem.
Section’s Edge Compute Platform was built on the principles of developer flexibility and control, and being part of this esteemed community that is developing a shared framework around edge computing will allow us to play a crucial role in furthering our mission to improve the Internet.
“As a software provider in the edge compute ecosystem, one of our biggest challenges is educating software engineers on how to build for increasingly distributed architectures. 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.” - Daniel Bartholomew, CTO, Section
What is LF Edge?
LF edge is an umbrella organization with the goal of establishing an interoperable and open framework for future edge computing projects independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating systems.
LF Edge offers a set of open source development tools for a variety of use cases spanning the industrial, enterprise, smart home and consumer fields, along with multiple edges and domains.
By ensuring that a company’s products are compatible with LF Edge, interoperability can be guaranteed, as can the avoidance of vendor lock-in issues in the future. Interoperability is important for companies adopting IoT and edge devices as they need to be compatible across sensors, edge devices, and the cloud backend.
By providing an open framework that addresses market needs for edge and IoT devices, The Linux Foundation intends to “address market needs for edge and IoT by combining new and existing stacks and consolidating them into one singular, customizable framework”. The new organization will help guarantee improved harmonization across the rapidly growing number of edge devices (expected to outgrow 20 billion by 2020).
“Edge computing continues to be a hot topic this year and we are excited that LF Edge is becoming the foundation that enables this innovation. We welcome Section to our growing ecosystem and look forward to their expertise in helping us create reliable and secure solutions.” - Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge & IoT, The Linux Foundation
Five Anchor Projects
There are five anchor projects within LF Edge (all open source), including three existing projects:
- Akraino Edge Stack: For businesses running edge services with a cloud back-end that want to automate provisioning and achieve greater flexibility and scalability; AT&T contributed the original code.
- EdgeX Foundry: A platform-agnostic software framework designed to run on an industrial edge gateway and enable plug-and-play integration of microservices; originated at Dell/EMC.
- Open Glossary of Edge Computing: An evolving reference guide to technical edge terminology; run by a collaborative group including ARM, Ericsson, Packet, Rafay Systems, Vapor.io, and Section.
In addition, there are two new projects:
- Home Edge Project: Samsung contributed the seed code for this run-anywhere services layer for home-based IoT devices.
- Project EVE: IoT software maker ZEDEDA donated the initial architecture to this edge-virtualization engine, which helps decrease latency and make workload distribution more efficient.
Standardizing and Accelerating the Edge
To date, there has been no standardization within edge computing. Through the creation of LF Edge, vendors, developers, OEMs and infrastructure providers are coming together to develop a common set of standards and achieve wider interoperability. The long-term goal is to build an open-source software stack, which brings together the leading telecom, cloud and enterprise edge technologies. At Section, we are excited to be a part of this community-forged movement, moving edge computing forward.
“It has been spectacular to witness the overwhelming success that the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has had in advancing the microservices ecosystem. Similarly, we believe that LF Edge will be a key driver in accelerating the advancement and adoption of edge computing.” - Daniel Bartholomew, CTO, Section
