2018 is looking like a big year for vendor-neutral, open source project, EdgeX Foundry. With evolution in technologies being made within the Internet of Things (IoT) edge computing space, improvements on what is existing is essential. EdgeX Foundry has announced early access to some of the features that will be a part of their California Code release, due for a full release in Summer 2018.
As a follow-up to the Barcelona Code release in October 2017, progress has been made towards considerable performance increases and size reductions, allowing increased efficiency in developing microservices and leading towards advancement in scalability. The California Code release will illustrate momentous progress for the EdgeX framework in supporting the requirements for deployment in IIoT applications essential for businesses to thrive.
Launched under The Linux Foundation in April 2017, the EdgeX Foundry project was set up with a goal to build and support a common open framework for IoT edge computing and an ecosystem of interoperable components that unifies the marketplace and accelerates the deployment of the Internet of Things and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions. To do this, the EdgeX Foundry member community has come together with a focus on areas which will enhance their existing code base as well as performance, security, system management, quality assurance, business needs, and educational assistance.
Collaborators at EdgeX Foundry have made huge strides in improving performance issues, in particular, reducing start-up times and in the significance of using C-based programming languages and open-source programming language Go in order to make EdgeX microservices easily adoptable when deploying IoT solutions. Core Data, Metadata, and Command are key features included in the California Code early access. These can be used to replace the Java versions, and why not? Early tests have uncovered that usage of Go Lang microservices use 97% less memory and a 100% improvement towards start-up time than Java.
“The California preview is a testament to the collaborative effort of the EdgeX community and our commitment to increase the size and speed of the architecture to meet today’s edge platforms,” said Keith Steele, EdgeX Foundry Chair of the Technical Steering Committee and CEO of IOTech. “By providing EdgeX in both Java and Go Lang, we offer developers more flexibility and a wider range of use in real-world IoT and edge computing solutions.”
Features for the full release will include baseline APIs and reference implementations for security and manageability, with plans in place to release further improvements, bi-annually with an extensive roadmap including Delhi in October 2018, Edinburgh in April 2019, Fiji in October 2019, and Geneva in April 2020.
As new members continue to join the steadily evolving Foundry community, The EdgeX Foundry have in addition launched the new Vertical Solutions Working Group to host use case-focused projects that are developed with input from end users in order to create solutions that meet their specific requirements.
Arti Loftus is an experienced Information Technology specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the research, writing, and editing industry with many published articles under her belt.Edited by
Ken Briodagh
