One of the greatest IoT stories coming out of the massive Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) “hype and holler” fest in Barcelona this week? VMware’s announcement to tackle the ever-challenging and increasingly complex edge of the hyperconnected world.
As broad and sweeping an announcement as they made, teaming up with Axis Communications (News - Alert) and Wipro Limited, they focused on two use cases, Asset Management and Smart Surveillance, both which are proven growth industries.
Their take on the edge is built around VMware vSAN hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software, VMware vSphere and VMware Pulse (News - Alert) IoT Center, components in multi-company, multi-tech systems, which starts to look like a new emerging tech giant led ecosystem.
Their focus is also on distributed systems, including Industrial IoT (IIoT) applications including oil well optimization, utility grids, and smart cities, “where the things reside in ruggedized, disparate, outdoor and often times, remote locations with inconsistent network and power,” according to their news release. They are also zeroing in on large scale factories and plants, and retail environments where there are thousands of branches with unique space and power requirements.
They tapped Gartner (News - Alert) to weigh in: “By 2022, as a result of digital business projects, 75% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the traditional, centralized data center or cloud, which is an increase from less than today’s 10%,” Gartner said.
Processing on the edge is also a challenge VMWare and partners are looking to take on, offering local processing and analytics which feed real time systems, reduce the requirement for bandwidth, and alleviate storage costs.
VMware also announced a second partnership with Dell EMC for Smart Surveillance Solution and Axis Communications with a surveillance industry solution. Axis is providing “IP cameras as well as 4G/LTE (News - Alert) routers which can be deployed to protect properties, stores, and employees” while VMWare will offer the Pulse IoT Center (something of a platform). Dell EMC is throwing in their servers and optional gateways.
VMware noted in their announcement the work they are doing with the US National Science Foundation (NSF), related to a new solicitation on Edge Computing Data Infrastructure for research that advances the state of the art in end-to-end networked systems architecture. VMware will fund two awards valued at a total of $6 million for U.S. university faculty members to work primarily on solving for new IoT edge requirements.