The Enterprise Micro-Datacenter: Small Cell Controllers, IoT Gateways and Edge Computing Servers

Today, enterprises can deploy small cell networks (e.g. Wi-Fi or sophisticated 4G cellular networks based on LTE technology) to go completely wireless, not only for their staff with the latest smartphones and tablets, but also to connect any of their assets, sensors, goods etc. to the Cloud. In addition, enterprises which go after the Internet of Things use IoT gateways as part of a tiered system architecture. Finally, the same enterprises may discover the benefits of edge cloud computing and consider the deployment of a cloudlet. The only issue: all needs to be enterprise-grade. Secure, reliable, with guaranteed quality of service levels. How does this relate to an enterprise micro-datacenter? And what does this small datacenter actually host? Let’s see. Continue reading

Edge Cloud to Cloud Integration for IoT

Telecoms and Internet industries work on concepts and architectures that will support new enterprise products and solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT), in addition to new products and services for the consumer sector. These concepts are known as mobile edge computing, edge cloud computing and fog computing. They are great. But what needs more attention is integration of edge cloud platforms with data centers and private clouds of IoT enterprises, as well as the integration with public hyper-scale clouds.   Continue reading

Open Fog Computing and Mobile Edge Cloud Gain Momentum

On 19th November 2015, Cisco, ARM, Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Princeton University have launched the Open Fog consortium with the goal to realise the full potential of the Internet of Things. On the other hand, the telecoms industry has been working since late 2014 on mobile edge computing. Also, edge cloud is seen by several vendors of telecoms infrastructure as a key component of 5th generation wireless systems. To add to the confusion, other renowned institutes like Carnegie Mellon University have promoted Cloudlets as a means to enable a new generation of edge cloud computing applications. What’s going on? How are things related?  Continue reading