Edge Computing — as defined by the 2021 State of the Edge Report — is the delivery of computing capabilities to the logical extremes of a network in order to improve the performance, security, operating cost and reliability of applications and services. As a natural extension of cloud computing — and estimated by analysts to be at least four times the size of cloud computing — the edge cloud construct is increasingly viewed as a key enabler for the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in which the widespread deployment of IoT, the global sharing economy, and the increase of zero marginal cost manufacturing deliver unprecedented communication-driven opportunities with massive economies of scale.
Now in its third year as an umbrella organization, LF Edge has become the center of gravity for some of the most impactful open source edge computing projects in the world, building an open, modular framework for edge computing. LF Edge’s common governance and collaborative resources unify open the edge market, with massive global industry support accelerating the adoption and deployment of edge applications across sectors verticals, 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, organizations of all types benefit from edge computing, yielding lower latency, reduced bandwidth costs, and maximized security and privacy; it means the work of LF Edge is more crucial than ever. Key impacts of LF Edge in 2022 are evidenced by both the project’s tenet publications, and a robust set of new use cases in deployment. Highlights include:
- At the Olympic Games Beijing 2022, Tencent collaborated with China Unicom and created a multi-access edge computing (MEC) platform to track and analyze real-time traffic data, based on Akraino’s Connected Vehicle Blueprint.
- Project Alvarium is providing trustworthy sustainability reporting and validated carbon emission measurements for organizations that are accurately tracking their carbon footprint.
- UC Davis and Opus One uses Fledge to create safer wine-making conditions via multi-node wireless sensor network to produce world class wine.
- Open Horizon components were leveraged in the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, which successfully sailed across the Atlantic ocean unmanned.
- Retailers use EdgeX Foundry to combine POS, RFID, Weight Scale and Computer Vision data to alert associates in real time, improving self-checkout efficiency and saving costs.
- A hiker used Fledge to collect temperature, humidity and air quality data while hiking on the beautiful Laugavegur trail in Iceland.
The complete annual report will include a culmination and summary of the many works done by the broader LF Edge community. It’ll be available in January 2023. Stay tuned!
