>> Narrator: Live from Vancouver, Canada it's theCUBE
covering OpenStack Summit North America 2018.
Brought to you by Red Hat, the OpenStack Foundation,
and its ecosystem partners.
>> Welcome back to theCUBE.
I'm Stu Miniman here with my cohost here John Troyer.
And we're at the OpenStack Summit 2018,
here in Vancouver.
One of the key topics we've been discussing,
actually for a few years but under new branding,
and it's really matured a bit is Edge Computing.
So, we're really happy to welcome to the program
two first time guests.
We have Arturo Suarez, who's
a program director with Canonical.
We also have first time Kontron employee on,
Eric Sarault, who's a product manager of software
and services with, I believe Montreal based,
is the headquarters. >> That's correct.
>> Stu: So, thank you for allowing all of us
to come up to Canada and have some fun.
>> It's a pleasure.
>> But we were all working during Victoria Day, right?
>> Yeah.
>> All right.
Arturo, we know Canonical.
So, we're going to talk about where you fit in.
But, Eric, let's start with Kontron.
I've got a little bit of background with them.
I worked in really kind of the TelCo space back in the 90s.
But for people that don't know Kontron
maybe give us some background.
So, basically, the entity here today is
representing the communications business unit.
So, what we do on that front
is mostly TelCo's service providers.
We also have strong customer base in the media vertical.
But right now the OpenStack, what we're focusing on,
is really on the Edge, mixed messages as well.
So, we're really getting about
delivering the true story about Edge
because everybody has their own version of Edge.
Everybody has their own little precisions about it.
But down the road,
it's making sure that we align everyone
towards the same messaging
so that we deliver a unified solution
so that everybody understands what it is.
>> Yeah.
So, my filter on this has been Edge depends who you are.
If you're a telecommunications vendor,
when we've talked about the Cohen,
it's the Edge of where they sit.
If I'm an enterprise,
it's the Edge is more like the IOT devices
and sometimes there's an aggregation box in between.
So, there's somewhere between two and four Edges out there.
It's like cloud.
We spent a bunch of years discussing it
and then we just put the term to the side and go things.
When you're talking Edge at Kontron, what does that mean?
You actually have devices.
>> We do.
>> So, who's your customer?
What does the Edge look like?
>> So, we do have customers on that front.
Right now we're working with some big names out there.
Basically delivering solutions for 12 inch depth racks
at the bottom of radio towers or near cell sites.
And ultimately working our way up closer
to what would look like, what I like to call
a "closet" data center, if you will.
Where we also have a platform with multiple systems
that's able to be hosted in the environment.
So, that's really about
not only having one piece of the equation
but really being able to get closer to the data center.
>> All right.
And Arturo, help bring us in
because we know Canonical's a software company.
What's the Edge mean to your customers
and where does Canonical fit?
>> So, Canonical, we take pride
of being an ubiquitous platform, right?
So, it doesn't matter where the Edge,
or what the Edge is, right?
There is an Ubuntu platform.
There is an Ubuntu operating system
for every single domain of compute,
going from the very end of the Edge.
That device that sits on your house
or that drone that is flying around.
And you need to do some application businesses,
or to post on application businesses with,
all the way to the core rank.
Our OpenStack story starts at the core.
But it's interesting
as it goes farther from that core,
how
the density,
it's an important factor
in how you do things, so.
We are able, with Kontron,
to provide an operating system and tooling
to tackle several of those
compute domains
that are part of the cloud
where real estate is really
expensive, right.
>> Eric, so you all are a systems developer?
Is that a fair two-word phrase? It's hardware and software?
>> Basically, we do our original design.
>> Okay. I know where I am.
>> Manufacturing.
>> So, I'm two steps away from hardware.
So, I think of those as all systems.
But you build things? >> Eric: Correct.
>> And you work with software.
I think for folks that have been a little more abstract,
you tend to think,
"Well, in those towers, there must be some bespoke chips
and some other stuff but nothing very sophisticated."
At this point we're running,
or that your customers are running,
full OpenStack installations on your system hardware.
>> Eric: Correct. >> That's in there
and it's rugged and it's upgradable.
Can you talk a little bit about the business impact,
of that sort of thing,
as you go out and work with your customers?
>> Certainly.
So, one of the challenges that we saw there
was really that,
from a hardware perspective,
people didn't really think about making sure that,
once the box is shipped,
how do you get the software on it, right.
Typically, it's a push and forget approach.
And this is where we saw a big gap,
that it doesn't make any sense for folks
to figure that on their own.
A lot of those people out there
are actually application developers.
They don't have the networking background.
They don't have a hardware engineering background.
And the last thing they want to be doing is spending weeks,
if not months, figuring out how to deploy OpenStack,
or Kubernetes, or other solutions out there.
So, that's where we leverage Canonical's tools,
including MAAS and Juju,
to really deploy that easily, at scale, and automated.
Along with packaging some documentation,
some
proper steps on how to deploy the environment
quickly in a few hours
instead of just sitting there scratching your head
and trying to figure it out, right.
Because that's the last thing they want.
The minute they have the box in their hand
they already want to consume the resources
and get up and running, so.
That's really the mission we want to tackle
that you're not going to see
from most hardware vendors out there.
>> Yeah, it's interesting.
We often talk about scale,
and our term,
it's a very different scale
when you talk about how fast it's deployed.
We're not talking about
tens or hundreds of thousands of cores
for one environment.
It's way more distributed.
>> Yeah. It's a different type of scale.
It's still a scale
but the building block is different, right.
So, we take the
orders of magnitude more of points of presence
than there are data centers, right.
At that scale, and the farther you go again from the core,
the larger the scale it is.
But the building block is different.
And the ability to play,
the price of the compute is different.
It goes much higher, right?
So, going back again,
that ability to condense in OpenStack,
the ability to deliver a Kubernetes
within that little space, is pretty unique, right?
And while we're still figuring out
what technology goes on the Edge,
we still need to account for, as Eric said,
the economics of that Edge
play a big, big part of that gain, right.
So, there is a scale,
it's in the thousands of points of presence,
in the hundreds of thousands of points of presence,
or different buildings
where you can put an Edge cloud,
or the use-case are still being defined,
but it's scaled on a different building block.
>> Well, Arturo, just to clarify for myself,
sometimes when you're looking at an OpenStack
component diagram,
there's a lot of components
and I don't know how many nodes I'm going to have to run.
And they're all talking to each other.
But at the Edge,
even though there's powerful hardware there,
there's an overhead consideration, right?
>> Yes. Absolutely and that's going to be there.
And OpenStack might evolve but might not evolve.
But this is something we are tackling today, right.
That's why
I love the fact that Kontron has also
a Kubernetes cluster, right.
That multi-technology,
the real multi-cloud is a multi-technology approach
to the Edge, right.
There are all the things that we can put in the Edge
and the access is set.
It's not defined.
We need to know exactly
how much room you have,
how you make the most out of each of your cores
or each of the gigs of RAM out there.
So, OpenStack obviously is heavy for some parts of the Edge.
Kontron, with our help,
has pushed that to the minimum Openstack viable
that allows you not to roll a track
when you need to
do something
on that location, right.
As that is as effective as it can get today.
>> Eric, can you help put this
in a framework of cloud, in general.
When I think of Edge,
a lot of it
data's going to need to go back to
data centers or a public cloud,
multiple public cloud providers.
How do your customers deal with that?
Are you using Kubernetes
to help them span between public cloud and the Edge?
>> So, it's a mix of both.
Right now we're doing some work to see how you can
utilize idle processing time,
along with Kubernetes scheduling
and orchestration capabilities.
But also OpenStack really caters
to the more traditional SDNN of the use-case out there
to run your traditional applications.
So, that's two things that we get out of the platform.
But it's also understanding
how much data do you want to go back to the data center
and making sure that most of the processing
is as close as possible.
That goes along with 5G, of course.
You literally don't have the time
to go back to the data centers.
So, it's really about putting those capabilities,
whether it's FPGAs, GPUs, and those platform,
and really enabling that as close as possible to the Edge,
or the end user, should I say.
>> Eric, I know you're in the carrier space.
Can you talk a little, maybe Kontron in general?
And maybe how you,
in your career as you go the next decades
looking at imbed-able technology everywhere,
and what do you all see as the vision of where we're headed?
>> Oh, wow. That's a hell of a question.
>> That's a big question to throw on you.
>> I think it's very interesting
to see where things are going.
There's a lot of consolidation.
And you have all these opensource project
that needs to work together.
The fact that OpenStack is embracing
the reality that Kubernetes is going to be there
to drive workloads.
And they're not stepping on each others' throat,
not even near.
So, this is where the collaboration,
between what we're seeing from the OpenStack Foundation
along with the projects from the Linux Foundation,
this is really,
really interesting to see this moving forward.
Other projects upcoming, like ONAP and Akraino,
it's going to be very interesting for the next 24 months,
to see what it's going to shape into.
>> One of the near things,
you mentioned 5G
and we've been watching,
what's available,
how that roll-out's going to go into the various pieces.
Is this ecosystem ready for that?
Going to take advantage of it?
And how soon until it is real for customers?
>> The hardware is ready.
That's for sure.
It's really going to be about making sure
if you have a split environment that's based on X86,
or a split with ARM,
it's going to be about making sure
that these environments can interact with each other.
The service chaining is probably
the most complicated aspect there is
to what people want to be doing there.
And there's a bit of a tie,
rope-pulling, from one side to another still
but it's finally starting to put in to play.
So, I think that the fact that Akraino,
which is going to bring a version of OpenStack
within the Linux Foundation,
this is going to be really unlocking the capabilities
that are out there to deploy the solution.
And tying along with that,
with hardware that has a single purpose,
that's able to cater all the use-cases,
and not just think about one vertical.
"And then this box does this
and this other box does another use-case."
I think that's the pitfall
that a lot of vendors fallen into.
Instead of just,
"Okay, for a second think outside the box.
How many applications could you fit in this footprint?"
And there probably going to be big data
and multiple use-cases,
that are nowhere near each other.
So, don't try to do this very specific platform
and just make sure
that you're able to cater pretty much everyone.
It's probably going to do the job, right, so.
>> There's over 40 sessions on Edge Computing here.
Why don't we just give both of you
the opportunity to give us a closing remarks
on the importance of Edge,
what you're seeing here at the show,
and final takeaways.
>> From our side, from the Canonical side again,
the Edge is
whatever is not core.
That
really has different domains of compute.
There is an Ubuntu for each of one of those domains.
As Eric mentioned, this is important
because you have a common platform,
not only in the hardware perspective
or the orchestrating technologies and their needs,
which are evolving fast.
And we have the ability,
because how we are built,
to accommodate or to build on all of those technologies.
And be able to allow developers to choose
what they want to do or how they want to do it.
Try and try again, in different types of technologies
and finally get to that interesting thing, right.
There is that application layer
that still needs to be developed
to make the best use out of the existing technologies.
So, it's going to be interesting to see how applications
and the technologies evolve together.
And we are in a great position
as a common platform to all of those compute domains
on all of those technologies
from the economical perspective.
>> On our side, what we see,
it's really about making sure it's a density play.
At the Edge,
and the closer you go to these more wild environments,
it's not data centers with 30 kilowatts per rack.
You don't have the luxury of putting in,
what I like to call whiteboards,
36 inch servers or open-compute systems.
So, we really want to make sure that
we're able to cater to that.
We do have the products for it
along with the technologies that Canonical
are bringing in on that front.
We're able to easily roll-out multiple types of application
for those different use-cases.
And, ultimately,
it's all going to be about density, power efficiency,
and making sure that your time to production
with the environment is as short as possible.
Because the minute they'll want access to that platform,
you need to be ready to roll it out.
Otherwise, you're going to be lagging behind.
>> Eric and Arturo, thanks so much for
coming on the program and giving us all the updates
on Edge Computing here.
For John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman.
Back with lots more coverage here
from OpenStack Summit 2018 in Vancouver.
Thanks for watching theCUBE.
(exciting music)