From banking ATMs to retail kiosk services to manufacturing assembly lines,
intelligent devices are an integral tool that we use to conduct business.
To handle the scale of these deployments and exploit their compute capacity, edge computing
brings enterprise applications closer to where the data is created and actions need to be
taken. It also allows enterprises to leverage AI and analyze their data in near-real time.
While edge computing creates unique opportunities, it also presents challenges.
By breaking down the neat physical boundaries of cloud data centers,
edge computing requires companies to consider security, management, and compliance for tens
or even tens of thousands of offsite cameras, sensors, and AI-ready factory controllers.
The pervasiveness of these edge devices can rapidly lead to a management problem
that can't be handled without automation.
Without autonomous management of these edge devices, the diversity of your
device inventory can also make traditional software delivery costly and error prone.
It's also important to remember that these devices change often.
For example, they are reconfigured in the field with more memory, storage, or connected
to different sensors. They are re-purposed to different tasks. They are moved or change owners.
A final point to consider: without autonomous management of the edge devices,
the lack of continuous connectivity can lead to security exposures,
outages, or missed opportunities to provide specialized offers to your customers. So,
your edge device management strategy must consider devices that are available online or offline.
Today I'll explain how IBM Edge Application Manager can automate
the deployment and maintenance of your edge device inventory.
You'll see how with autonomous management, a single administrator can manage the scale,
variability, and rate of change of application
environments across tens of thousands of endpoints.
IBM Edge Application Manager allows you to dramatically reduce the administrator’s
burden by defining deployment intent instead of coding and maintaining endless install scripts.
It also manages your endpoints in one place with the RedHat OpenShift platform that
runs on the cloud of your choice. Okay - Imagine that you work for
a fictitious company, "World-of-Widgets". You're about to roll out a new assembly line
across your factories that can apply customized painting for the widgets that you're producing.
To ensure the quality of custom painting,
a set of programmable cameras are installed on every assembly machine.
However, this creates a challenge for your IT department:
how do you manage all those devices and make sure that they quickly adapt to new painting patterns?
World-of-Widgets has decided to use IBM Edge Application Manager.
IBM Edge Application Manager gives an administrator the ability to
manage thousands of edge endpoints by carrying out identification, agreement,
execution, and verification of management actions without intervention,
driving down administration costs and streamlining the deployment of device-specific updates.
In this case, IBM Edge Application Manager helps to deliver the service right to the cameras,
improving response time by spreading the workload across hundreds of these small container-capable
devices -- thereby avoiding the transport/compute burden of a centralized data center architecture.
It's the first week of the rollout and the lead technician texts you
that they've just installed new machines at the factory in Tucson, Arizona. Yippee!
You're responsible for verifying that the
equipment has been successfully connected to the management hub and that the right software gets
installed on the edge devices.
Fortunately, you don’t have to write scripts with IBM Edge Application Manager. Instead,
you can specify the criteria that determines what's deployed to each device -- you don't have
to deal with each individual end point.
The workload, defined as one or more services, can be automatically deployed because it meets
the criteria you've already set.
Each service represents a set of specific functionality and includes policies that
assure that the right software is placed on the right node at the right time.
And the system will automatically update itself
when new workloads or edge nodes are introduced, or environmental conditions change that
invalidate the original placement decisions.
As we've seen through this brief example, IBM Edge Application Manager - with its autonomous
management capability delivers no touch lifecycle management.
When combined with an edge-native
programming model, a single administrator can securely deliver software to almost
any smart device or cluster capable of running containerized workloads.
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