Red Hat technologies help drive IBM edge solutions for the 5G era

Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenStack Platform are important components of IBM’s telco and edge computing solutions announced today. Whether you're deploying services on-premises, in public or private clouds or at the edge, Red Hat and IBM can help you manage and analyze data more quickly and securely at a massive scale across the hybrid cloud.

5G and edge computing delivers promise

For some applications, the only way to achieve the desired responsiveness is to be as close as possible to the user or data. Sensor networks, IoT and time sensitive workloads like rich media and AI/ML applications depend on network speed and proximity to compute processing. It's just physics: Being farther away from compute, even with a 5G network transmitting data, may mean unacceptable response times.

Edge computing brings computing, storage and networking services closer to users and data sources. By moving compute power closer to where the data is generated, companies distribute the flexibility of cloud computing across a large number of locations and resources. 

As we’ve noted before, we believe that edge computing is the next IT footprint, and that it simply does not exist without the hybrid cloud. As we begin to see 5G networks roll out over the next few years, we will also see enterprises and service providers continue to transform into hybrid multi cloud platform providers. 

IBM built the IBM Edge Application Manager on Red Hat OpenShift and the Telco Network Cloud Manager on that and Red Hat OpenStack Platform, to help these services deploy anywhere customers depend on - on premises, public or private clouds or at the edge. 

The future for edge computing

The most important challenges edge computing can address include bandwidth, latency, resiliency and data sovereignty. For service providers, edge computing can help improve the customer’s quality of experience by moving applications or content towards the lower edge tiers in the network. Service providers can also deploy a new class of services at the edge to take advantage of their proximity to the customers. And it doesn’t stop there!

According to industry analyst projections, the edge cloud services market is poised to grow by 50% this year alone. While we’ve already started to see edge deployments in telcos across the globe with Vodafone Idea Limited, Rakuten, Pluribus and others, we also expect to see widespread enterprise adoption over the next few years. A survey from Analysys Mason suggests major advancements in the edge computing space including:

• Respondents to the survey planned to spend an average of 30% of their IT budgets on edge cloud computing over the next three years.

• Security and compliance are the strongest drivers for edge computing across all surveyed sectors.

• The majority of respondents in their survey expect edge use cases to lift organization revenues by up to 6% after three years.

• The majority of organizations across all verticals expect a 10-30% reduction in costs from using edge computing, with an average expected savings of 10-20%. 

A new solution for the 5G era

Edge computing is poised to accelerate innovation, where applications and services can now be built across multiple cloud providers, and helps to create an opportunity for organizations to see telecommunications companies as more than connectivity service providers. These solutions from IBM and powered by Red Hat will help answer their need for security and massive scalability at the edge. 

After deploying Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Telco Network Cloud Manager is able to deliver intelligent automation capabilities to rapidly orchestrate virtual and container network functions. Service providers will have the ability to manage workloads on distributed compute nodes creating a highly scalable architecture for virtualized and containerized workloads.

Red Hat’s approach to edge computing

With its latest advancements, Red Hat is uniquely positioned to address the needs of organizations looking to extend their infrastructure to the edge. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift at the core of  our open hybrid cloud strategy, organizations can benefit from standardized application and operating environments that give then the flexibility and consistency to deploy and manage workloads in the same way, wherever they want — be that in public, private or hybrid clouds, from traditional core datacenters out to broadly distributed edge locations where smaller footprints make a difference. 

As with everything we do, Red Hat’s approach to edge will always be based on open source values, principles and technology. Our vision for the edge is innovative, hybrid and completely open. This isn’t a new approach for us - to enable new innovation, at the edge or otherwise, our work starts collaboratively with the upstream community and our robust ecosystem of technology partners. This helps us solve the thorniest challenges of modern and future-looking computing, including delivering solutions designed for the edge.