Eclipse Foundation Warns Operators: Don’t Be a ‘Dumb Pipe’ for AWS

The Eclipse Foundation is fostering open source software for edge computing that could enable network operators to become bonafide cloud providers — something, it claims, hyperscale cloud providers will never seek to deliver. The Eclipse Foundation is fostering open source software for edge computing that could enable network operators to become bonafide cloud providers — something, it claims, hyperscale cloud providers will never seek to deliver. “We firmly believe that the core infrastructure components of edge computing must be open source” and hosted in a vendor-neutral organization, said Mike Milinkovich, the foundation’s executive director. The Edge Native Working Group, which includes eight founding companies, wants to provide operators with a software stack that developers can innovate on at the edge without handing over the keys to the castle, so to speak. It’s a completely different approach than the deals Amazon Web Services (AWS) struck with Verizon and other operators last week for its Wavelength edge compute service. “AWS is sort of like the way Microsoft was in the ‘90s in the sense that it is this huge juggernaut in this new evolving space that nobody can touch,” Milinkovich told SDxCentral. “Lots of people will be very interested in what AWS is offering. Do I think that’s the long-term solution for broad adoption of edge computing by a cross section of the industry? Absolutely not.” The group has released code for its first two initial projects. Eclipse ioFog, which was contributed by Edgeworx and is being led by its CEO Kilton Hopkins, enables a microservices platform to run on edge devices. Eclipse fogO5, which was contributed to the working group by Adlink, is a virtualized infrastructure designed to address the needs of fog computing. “We feel that edge computing is an area that is showing an enormous amount of interest and growth, and particularly with ioFog we’ve got a technology stack here which really helps this exciting Kubernetes ecosystem that’s all the rage at the moment into the edge,” Milinkovich said. The group is also working to address DevOps at the edge, or what it calls EdgeOps, because “there’s a whole host of very specific and special concerns that pop up when you’re talking about edge that just don’t happen in cloud,” he added. Depending on the direction of the participants — other members include Bosch, Eurotech, Huawei, Intel, Kynetics, and Siemens — the group may evolve to begin developing industry-specific applications for edge computing, but the focus today is on building and refining the software layer for developers to innovate on. “These are very horizontal platforms for enabling edge compute,” Milinkovich explained. “You have now this need for the carriers to embrace some kind of application infrastructure at the edge and, yes, for some it might seem attractive to grab Amazon,” said Edgeworx’s Hopkins. “But the thing is, this is the opportunity for the carriers to step away from just being data pipes and actually participate in making and taking some of that value in the world of distributed applications,” he said. “They couldn’t do it for the cloud. They were the pipe into the cloud but now they’re the ones who own and operate the network that extends to the edge. They have a chance to actually be AWS in those environments if they have the right operating framework.” Operators need to put their own application layer on top of 5G network infrastructure if they want to capture that value, Hopkins explains. “Open source totally changes that dynamic and I do think that edge computing and 5G put together here are a double threat if an operator does not realize that they need to participate in owning this infrastructure,” he said. “If they go and they hand all of the money over to Amazon like has been described with the Verizon deal, they’re basically saying: ‘Well, we could have been an application player, we could have been the software player, but we’re going to agree to be a dumb pipe again, another dumb pipe for Amazon,’” he said. “I think it was a mistake personally and what you’re seeing is open source does solve this the same way that Kubernetes is solving peoples’ dependence on three large vendors for the cloud.” Milinkovich echoed that sentiment, adding that the Edge Native Working Group is focusing on the opportunity that was created by Kubernetes in that “nobody wants to return to a world of single vendor lock-in.” A vendor-neutrally governed, open source software stack that solves technical problems is at the “absolute core of what the industry needs for edge computing to really take off,” he said.