http://www.linuxformat.comOVER THE EDGE
http://www.techradar.com/pro/linux December 2019 LXF257 41Jason Shepherd INTERVIEW
up with open APIs which enable different
hardware to interoperate and to get
manufacturers to agree to use them.
EdgeX Foundry has, in its short life,
achieved precisely this. As it happens,
EdgeX has recently celebrated its 1.0
release, which shares its codename
with Scotland’s chilly capital.
That great city where once a young
Jonni Bidwell was often to be found in a
pub in Portobello, asking his beer and/or
whisky what one is to do with an
undergraduate degree in mathematics. On
this occasion he and other distinguished
open source luminaries enjoyed a whisky
reception at Edinburgh Castle, proving
conclusively that there is life after maths.Linux Format: Hi Jason. I’m Jonni, technical
editor for Linux Format – an actual paper
magazine, would you believe.
Jason Shepherd: Hi Jonni. I’m Jason, CTO
for IoT and Edge Computing at Dell
Technologies. My role with my team is
to drive our core strategy, so we look at
market strategy for IoT and Edge. We
own this engineered roadmap where Dell
Technologies is building infrastructure,
from the thin compute edge, through the
mini edges to the mini clouds.
One of the problems right now, and
we’ll talk about this more in a moment, is
that everyone is combining applications
with the core infrastructure, and that’s not
going to scale. When’s the last time your
ERP system managed your PCs? Bad idea- you’ve got to decouple this stuff. My
team is about “How do we get to the scale
factor? How do we drive core strategy?”
And of course standards in open
source are a key part of that. I got EdgeX
started with a phone call in July 2015.
I called a team at Dell and said “This isn’t
going to work”. I was driving somewhere
between Santa Clara and San Leandro
doing the magical mystery tour, meeting
all these companies trying to figure out
how we were going to scale this thing.
I realised we needed the right architecture,
so I called up my team and said “What if
we tried this?”
Admittedly, we initially considered
creating a Dell platform, but nobody
wins if we’re the 401st IoT platform
out there. Plus it’s not just about basic
interoperability, it’s also about what I call
the holy grail. And that’s the holy grail of
digital, not just IoT. A lot of people are just
getting going in this market, but IoT has
been done for a long time in embedded
systems – it’s a buzzword now. I mean,
how often do we say “I’m going to do
some e-commerce today?” No, you just
buy stuff online.LXF: Our marketing department have
much to learn, apparently.
JS: IoT, or any of this edge stuff – they’re
all buzzwords, but it’s about solving
customer/end user problems, getting
better experiences, using your powers
for good not evil, and solving real-world
problems. It’s been going on for a while,
but right now it’s all about hitting scale.
The holy grail is selling data – everyone
says data is the new oil; resources –
compute, storage, networking, energy,
ride-shares... y’know, anything
consumable; and services – your domain
knowledge – to total strangers. So take
an open source expert, why can’t they
go and consult for someone who’s never
met them before? I’ve had various
conversations with many smart people
and no one’s said that’s what they
ultimately want. They want to share orason Shepherd is a Governing
Board member on the Linux
Foundation’s LF Edge project,
as well as CTO for IoT and
Edge Computing at Dell Technologies.
Back in 2018, at the Linux Foundation’s
Open Source Summit he was kind
enough to spend some time to talk to
Jonni Bidwell about the EdgeX Foundry
project, a common open platform for
computing at the edge of the IoT.
Mediating between the cloud and IoT
devices is easy, but devices may lock you
into proprietary edge devices or their own
private clouds, and public clouds lock you
in to their APIs. The challenge is to comeOVER THE EDGE
J
“Funny like I’m a
clown? I amuse you?”4440Decmbr rb0c2193b29 December 2019 LXF257 41
Jason Shepherd INTERVIEW
up with open APIs which enable different
hardware to interoperate and to get
manufacturers to agree to use them.
EdgeX Foundry has, in its short life,
achieved precisely this. As it happens,
EdgeX has recently celebrated its 1.0
release, which shares its codename
with Scotland’s chilly capital.
That great city where once a young
Jonni Bidwell was often to be found in a
pub in Portobello, asking his beer and/or
whisky what one is to do with an
undergraduate degree in mathematics. On
this occasion he and other distinguished
open source luminaries enjoyed a whisky
reception at Edinburgh Castle, proving
conclusively that there is life after maths.Linux Format: Hi Jason. I’m Jonni, technical
editor for Linux Format – an actual paper
magazine, would you believe.
Jason Shepherd: Hi Jonni. I’m Jason, CTO
for IoT and Edge Computing at Dell
Technologies. My role with my team is
to drive our core strategy, so we look at
market strategy for IoT and Edge. We
own this engineered roadmap where Dell
Technologies is building infrastructure,
from the thin compute edge, through the
mini edges to the mini clouds.
One of the problems right now, and
we’ll talk about this more in a moment, is
that everyone is combining applications
with the core infrastructure, and that’s not
going to scale. When’s the last time your
ERP system managed your PCs? Bad idea- you’ve got to decouple this stuff. My
team is about “How do we get to the scale
factor? How do we drive core strategy?”
And of course standards in open
source are a key part of that. I got EdgeX
started with a phone call in July 2015.
I called a team at Dell and said “This isn’t
going to work”. I was driving somewhere
between Santa Clara and San Leandro
doing the magical mystery tour, meeting
all these companies trying to figure out
how we were going to scale this thing.
I realised we needed the right architecture,
so I called up my team and said “What if
we tried this?”
Admittedly, we initially considered
creating a Dell platform, but nobody
wins if we’re the 401st IoT platform
out there. Plus it’s not just about basic
interoperability, it’s also about what I call
the holy grail. And that’s the holy grail of
digital, not just IoT. A lot of people are just
getting going in this market, but IoT has
been done for a long time in embedded
systems – it’s a buzzword now. I mean,
how often do we say “I’m going to do
some e-commerce today?” No, you just
buy stuff online.LXF: Our marketing department have
much to learn, apparently.
JS: IoT, or any of this edge stuff – they’re
all buzzwords, but it’s about solving
customer/end user problems, getting
better experiences, using your powers
for good not evil, and solving real-world
problems. It’s been going on for a while,
but right now it’s all about hitting scale.
The holy grail is selling data – everyone
says data is the new oil; resources –
compute, storage, networking, energy,
ride-shares... y’know, anything
consumable; and services – your domain
knowledge – to total strangers. So take
an open source expert, why can’t they
go and consult for someone who’s never
met them before? I’ve had various
conversations with many smart people
and no one’s said that’s what they
ultimately want. They want to share orason Shepherd is a Governing
Board member on the Linux
Foundation’s LF Edge project,
as well as CTO for IoT and
EdgeComputing at Dell Technologies.
Backin2018, at the Linux Foundation’s
Open Source Summit he was kind
enough to spend some time to talk to
Jonni Bidwell about the EdgeX Foundry
project, a common open platform for
computing at the edge of the IoT.
Mediating between the cloud and IoT
devices is easy, but devices may lock you
into proprietary edge devices or their own
private clouds, and public clouds lock you
in to their APIs. The challenge is to come
J
“Funny like I’m a
clown? I amuse you?”