2023 LF Edge Annual Report – Executive Summary
Edge computing, as defined by Sharpening the Edge II: Diving Deeper Into the LF Edge Taxonomy and Projects, is the delivery of computing capabilities to the logical extremes of a network to improve the performance, security, operating cost, and reliability of applications and services. As the world becomes more interconnected, data-driven, and reliant on real-time decision-making, edge computing has become a pivotal technology to meet the demands of the digital era.
As an open ecosystem, the LF Edge project umbrella meets those evolving demands. Now in its fourth year as an organization, LF Edge represents the center of gravity for some of the world’s most impactful open source edge computing initiatives (including Akraino, EdgeX Foundry and Fledge projects, among others) building an open, modular framework for edge computing. The common governance and collaborative resources unify the open edge market, with global industry support to speed the adoption and deployment of edge applications across sectors, including telecommunications, Cloud, IoT, industrial IoT, retail, AI / ML, factory floor, smart home, and more. As data gravity continues to shift away from the centralized cloud to a distribution from edge to cloud, most organizations benefit from edge computing due to the lower latency, reduced bandwidth costs, and maximized security and privacy. This means the work of LF Edge is more crucial than ever.
Compelled by the robust set of Akraino blueprints in deployment; EdgeX’s 10M+ container downloads and growing IIoT platform, the project’s tenet publication, the State of the Edge Report, and a diverse set of new deployment stories and technical white papers that provide strategic guidance on how to scale, 2023 was a banner year. Some of LF Edge’s progress in 2023 includes new deployment stories across Security, Gaming, Retail, and Industrial verticals as well as continued collaboration with other industry organizations, including ETSI, Open Compute Foundation, GSMA, Open Grid Alliance, and more.
- Security The Akraino community published an Akraino Platform Security White Paper to define the security requirements of its Akraino blueprints.
- Gaming Members Arm, Tencent, Zenlayer, YSEMI, Genymotion, and Alicon SE investigated how to leverage Akraino blueprints to improve gaming scenarios across user experience, cost, operation, and maintenance to help improve the commercial feasibility of cloud games.
- Retail: Deployments from IBM, Intel, and Scale Computing leverage EdgeX Foundry’s Open Retail Reference Architecture project, Open Horizon, and Secure Device Onboard to build commercial solutions that have applications across multiple industries to address how to rapidly scale actionable insights at the point of interaction — i.e., delivering AI at the Edge (see Using Open Source to Scale Retail Applications at Edge Locations).
- Industrial:
- The Fledge project graduated to Stage 3 in 2023. IIoT widely uses Fledge in applications across industries, and it continues to evolve with contributions from a thriving community of developers and adopters. Focused on industrial data pipelines to and from industrial assets and systems, edge applications, and edge machine learning, Fledge users and contributors are suppliers and integrators to industrial markets as well as industrial companies and work in process and discrete manufacturing to help produce drone military aircraft, engines, aluminum car parts, food processing, chemical polymers, energy, oil and gas, paper products, premium wines, professional auto racing digital twins, and more.
- EdgeX Foundry outlined how Eaton, a global leader in electrical power management, adopted EdgeX Foundry as its common edge platform, with EdgeX empowering their engineers to accelerate product development, code reuse, and more.
- Continued collaboration with industry alliances & projects
- Along with ETSI and Open Compute Project, we once again co-hosted the EdgeNative AI Hackathon that XYZ placeholder.
- The Fledge project has expanded into LF Energy’s Project FledgePower with 67 energy companies and suppliers and OSDU (an Open Group Project) with 167 oil and gas companies and suppliers, all working toward a common goal.
- LF Edge partnered with LF Networking, CAMARA, the GSMA, and TMForum to outline
- Additional work with ETSI included the publication of How to Build Edge Solutions with LF Edge Akraino Blueprints & ETSI MultiAccess Edge Computing (MEC) APIs, which detailed the impact of the collaborative, award-winning PCEI blueprint.
- There was a new collaboration with Open Grid Alliance.
Driven partially by the growing demand for AI applications, we expect the next 12 months to be a significant turning point for the edge market. Please join us along the journey!
Read the full 2023 LF Edge Annual Report, with community highlights from all LF Edge projects, TSC Chair, General Manager, Outreach Chair, and more.
