IoT
New services and solutions to help enterprises and telecommunications companies speed their transition to edge computing in the 5G era were announced by IBM at its Think Digital conference, held last week.
This effort combines IBM’s experience and expertise in multicloud environments with Red Hat’s open source technology, which became part of IBM last year in one of the biggest tech acquisitions in history.
IBM’s new offerings run on Red Hat OpenShift, the leading enterprise Kubernetes platform that runs everywhere — from the data center to multiple public clouds to the edge.
They enable enterprises to overcome the complexity of managing workloads across a massive volume of devices from different vendors and provide telcos the agility they need to quickly deliver edge-enabled services to customers.
Clients across industries can now fully realize the benefits of edge computing, including running AI and analytics at the edge to achieve insights closer to where the work is done.
Solutions announced at Think Digital include the IBM Edge Application Manager, an autonomous management solution to enable AI, analytics and IoT enterprise workloads to be deployed and remotely managed, delivering real-time analysis and insight at scale.
According to IBM, the solution enables the management of up to 10,000 edge nodes simultaneously by a single administrator.
It’s the first solution to be powered by an open source project, Open Horizon, created by IBM engineers designed to enable a single person to securely manage such a vast network of edge devices.
IBM Telco Network Cloud Manager, a new solution running on Red Hat OpenShift was also unveiled to deliver intelligent automation capabilities to orchestrate virtual and container network functions in minutes.
Service providers will have the ability to manage workloads on both Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenStack Platform, which will be critical as telcos increasingly look for ways to modernize their networks for greater agility and efficiency, and to provide new services today and as 5G adoption expands.
New solutions include a portfolio of edge-enabled applications and services, including IBM Visual Insights, IBM Production Optimization, IBM Connected Manufacturing, IBM Asset Optimization, IBM Maximo Worker Insights and IBM Visual Inspector. All offer features to give clients the flexibility to deploy AI and cognitive applications and services at scale.
In addition, IBM also announced Edge Ecosystem , through which an increasingly broad set of ISVs, GSIs and more will be helping enterprises capture the opportunities of edge computing with a variety of solutions built upon IBM’s technology.
IBM is also creating the IBM Telco Network Cloud Ecosystem, bringing together a set of partners across the telecommunications industry that offer a breadth of network functionality that helps providers deploy their network cloud platforms.
These open ecosystems of equipment manufacturers, networking and IT providers and software providers include Cisco, Dell Technologies, Juniper Networks, Intel, NVIDIA, Samsung, Packet, Indra Minsait, Eurotech, Arrow Electronics and F5 Networks.