Edge federation refers to the interconnection and coordination of multiple edge computing resources and services from different providers, in order to deliver a more comprehensive and distributed computing infrastructure. In a recent interview at the Telco Cloud & Edge Forum, Deutsche Telekom Product Manager for Edge Computing and Innovations Yamina Kelm explained that after a bit of a slow roll, “finally the industry is moving into the topic. So companies are developing use cases that would be edge relevant.”
In terms of edge federation, she said “that when going for a joint platform layer we could easily solve all the problems because if just everyone uses the same platform layer, we can easily do federation. But the truth of it, it’s much more complex, and we need someone who is somehow dealing with all those discussions and giving guidelines or guardrails on how to approach the topic jointly.”
Technological and business drivers for edge federation
Major edge federation technological drivers include:
- Scalability—The growth in IoT and other applications/services that benefit from a distributed computing architecture often require low latency and localized data processing. Edge federation helps operators scale up available compute more efficiently by interconnecting multiple edge locations and pooling their resources.
- Interoperability—With the increase in edge computing providers, standardization and interoperability are needed to ensure unified management across providers and geographies. For edge federation to essentially work, common interfaces and APIs would support inter-provider data exchanges, resource pooling and collaborative service delivery.
- Resilience—By providing redundant and distributed computing resources, operators can collectively leverage interconnected platforms to increase resiliency and fault tolerance.
Primary business drivers for edge federation are:
- Monetization—With federated edge and unified management, operators could, in theory, capture new revenue streams in the same vein as existing edge revenue streams, just at a larger scale; things like analytics, caching, or security.
- Service differentiation—Data-driven services that are plussed-up with edge federation would let operators deliver more targeted, functional offerings that drive customer experience and associated value.
- Collaboration—Part and parcel to the larger idea of edge federation, operators could use these interlinked platforms to more effectively share resources, knowledge and expertise, while also enjoying economies of scale and associated cost reductions.
Deutsche Telekom sees edge federation as all about platforms
‘When looking at federated edges,” Kelm said, “it is not only the connection of the infrastructures with each other, there’s many more layers to that. So we need to process the traffic locally, which we usually send back to the home country in a roaming scenario. So we need to find technical solutions for very complex problems. And we are still very much at the beginning; we are exploring that. But of course if you want to develop that to a market-ready product, which really is a European solution, you of course need more investment in order to enable that cross-operator and cross -industry even.”
As operators develop their own edge strategies, as well as edge federation strategies, hyperscalers have a clear role to play. Go-to-market strategies, by and large, consist of dedicated on-prem edge deployments alongside distributed public edge deployments; the same would hold true for joining multiple operators’ edge infrastructures. Point being, edge federation is not something operators will pursue in a vacuum.
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In that scenario, Kelm said, a “very valuable edge ecosystem” is developed when all types of edge deployments are joined up. “So why wouldn’t you then also use hyperscaler edge solutions? So it’s just complimenting each other I think. It’s just that we still have some way to go in order to enable that properly so that we really have a seamless integration of all the different solutions. But I think only with that we really will have the most valuable approach and that whole topic, it’s not that you either do this or you do that, you have to do all of that and have to be as open and flexible as possible in order to really make the topic great in the end.”
Deutsche Telekom has a number of different irons in the fire here. It’s part of the Kinetic Edge Alliance, a consortium of operators, cloud providers and other firms working to develop a common edge platform and set of standards. DT has also established a testbed with the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems to establish in Berlin a city-wide edge computing infrastructure for smart city applications.
In terms of the benefits edge federation would provide to end users, “The scalability is a big advantage when it comes to telco edge cloud,” Kelm said. “As soon as it gets to a point where it makes sense to put in on-premise infrastructure…you can then flexibly do that. And then you have parts of the processing power on the edge, parts of the processing power on premise, and parts of the processing power, or anything else like the training of AI models, on cloud. And this is exactly where we see the market moving to, and also what we like a lot because that’s exactly where we can generate the most value.”
In terms of near-term expectations, “We are ready to go,” Kelm said. “We have our infrastructure ready in our network and as soon as there is a chance to deploy a live use case, we would of course do that…I think there’s still some uncertainties from the market. That’s why we continue to do trials so that we can make sure that everything is really working properly from a customer perspective.”
She continued: “I think what is very important in the next five years is of course the topic of [edge] federation…We have to figure out how do we get an interoperable solution and this is where the platforms are key.”