TALKING
‘‘ business
5G is accelerating deployments of Edge Computing , as communications service providers ( CSPs ) look to rearchitect their network infrastructure and grow the capacity of their networks as well as add new services . As technology evolves towards containers and cloudnative architectures and applications , there are key architectural considerations for CSPs to address .
The case for Edge
There are three key use cases when it comes to 5G and these are : enhanced mobile broadband for consumers who are eating up ever-increasing amounts of data , IoT and machine-to-machine communications and communications where maximum reliability and low latency is essential , such as applications for self-driving cars and remote surgery .
As service providers scale to meet the demands of more users and new bandwidth hungry applications , the need for compute power that sits closer to the enduser ( at the Edge ) becomes paramount . data centre , helping organisations deliver on the operational excellence they ’ re striving for . Easing the way for cloud-native application development is the necessary next step to enable service providers to achieve better overall functionality to deliver services to end-users faster and ensure optimum performance of applications . This involves careful consideration of the design when implementing a cloud platform .
The case for a horizontal platform approach
Timo Jokiaho , Chief Technologist – Global Telco Ecosystem , Red Hat
The advantages of Edge Computing for operators are numerous and include automation , zero-touch provisioning and multi-cluster management to be able to manage edge deployments at a large scale , as well as smaller footprint for better utilisation of physical resources . However , Edge Computing is not a strategy on its own ; it needs to form part of a wider hybrid cloud strategy .
Open hybrid cloud enables service providers to onboard any workload on any footprint ( whether public cloud , private cloud , virtualised or bare metal ) to any location , from the core data centre to the Edge server . To meet the needs of these different scenarios , an Edge Computing solution should support hybrid workloads of virtual machines ( VMs ), containers and Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning workloads in microservices architectures , including consistent management and orchestration . If the Edge were to be managed separately across hundreds of sites , operations would become complex and chaotic .
Service providers need to manage their disparate edge sites in the same way they would manage the rest of their locations in the network , which means treating the Edge as a natural extension of a hybrid cloud . Open hybrid cloud deployment provides much needed consistency across the technology ecosystem – from edge devices to the network to the centralised
A container-based core will enable CSPs to deliver cloud-native 5G networks , with containerised networking apps and modular microservices promising the opportunity to dynamically orchestrate and grow network service capacity across distributed architectures . However , when it comes to implementing a containerised cloud platform , service providers need to decide whether to employ one type of infrastructure in core locations and a different one in distributed sites ( a vertical solutions approach ), or to use a horizontally integrated cloud across both core and distributed sites .
An open horizontal cloud is one in which a service provider ’ s applications are built and distributed on a common platform that is independent from the underlying hardware and therefore compatible
Service providers need to manage their disparate edge sites in the same way they would manage the rest of their locations in the network , which means treating the Edge as a natural extension of a hybrid cloud .
www . intelligentcio . com INTELLIGENTCIO AFRICA 31