{"id":67269,"date":"2022-10-03T19:06:42","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T19:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/?p=3999776"},"modified":"2022-10-03T19:06:42","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T19:06:42","slug":"ibm-cloud-satellite-a-wider-playing-field-for-the-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/?p=67269","title":{"rendered":"IBM Cloud Satellite: A wider playing field for the cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"
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IBM recently announced a partnership with Bharti Airtel in India to provide hybrid cloud services for edge computing. We take a look and interview IBM\u2019s VP & CTO of Networking & Edge Computing. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Image: nmann77\/Adobe Stock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

IBM and communications services provider Bharti Airtel have joined forces<\/a> to provide Airtel\u2019s edge computing platform to India. It will include 120 data centers across 20 cities, and demonstrates interest in edge computing deployed as a hybrid cloud environment.<\/p>\n

This also anticipates the rollout of 5G<\/a> in India next year, which is predicted to have an economic impact of $1 trillion by 2035, according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Chairman PD Vaghela.<\/p>\n

Likewise, edge adoption and adaptation are growing. IBM VP & CTO of networking & edge computing Rob High points out that today\u2019s crop of 15 billion edge market devices is only expected to grow.<\/p>\n

Growing adoption of the hybrid cloud<\/h2>\n

Hybrid<\/a> and multicloud<\/a> enables organizations to take advantage of cloud-native development practices and abilities without being beholden to one or another of the large cloud providers.<\/p>\n

SEE: Hiring Kit: Cloud Engineer<\/a> (TechRepublic Premium)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThey need to be multicloud and be able to adapt to run their business at the speed of business,\u201d High said in an interview with TechRepublic. \u201cThey want to be able to decide where to place their workload. They want to be able to decide whether to use a public cloud or their private data centers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving even closer to the edge, the problem becomes that each edge point is very different. It may have different architectures, different storage and network capacities, or be configured differently. Some edge points may be on the move, like smart vehicles. Multicloud addresses the diversity and dynamism of edge devices, High said.<\/p>\n

Another element here is multi-access edge computing, which plays in the same arena as the cloud. Telecommunications companies often sell servers for clients with network capabilities on either a dedicated or private MEC. For Airtel and other telcos, that is part of their edge story.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re trying to make compute capacity available to their enterprise clients, so instead of having to have a server in my store, I could simply put it into that central office, regional data center or hub location and offload the need to have the hardware in the store itself,\u201d said High.<\/p>\n

In this case, IBM is helping set up Airtel\u2019s MEC infrastructure in a hybrid environment based on IBM Cloud Satellite<\/a> and Red Hat OpenShift for their clients who want edge computing to reduce latency or transmission costs. It reduces the need for a lot of processing power in a factory or retail store.<\/p>\n

Specifically, IBM contributed Edge Application Manager, a commercial distribution of the LF Edge Open Horizon Project \u2014 an open source project for which IBM is a primary donor. Airtel will pass this capacity on to Maruti Suzuki India, India\u2019s largest passenger car manufacturer, which plans to use it to increase accuracy and efficiency for quality inspections on the factory floor.<\/p>\n

Declarative systems<\/h2>\n

Where this differs from a single-cloud system provider such as AWS is that the clients can create different policies for different edge nodes without being beholden to a top-down system. Nodes can be set up differently depending on hardware such as whether it has a GPU or the number of cores.<\/p>\n