VMware is to begin partnering with IoT hardware manufacturers to offer end-to-end edge computing solutions using hyperconverged infrastructure, in what the company calls a “partner play”.
Following the launch of VMware Pulse IoT Center, which went into general availability in January, the company is offering a new range of complete IoT packages for various use-cases and applications. It will be leveraging other areas of parent company Dell Technologies' business, including hardware manufacturing, as well as partnering with third-party hardware and software providers.
“We're not doing this all ourselves,” VMware’s vice president of IoT, Mimi Spier, told Channel Pro. “We're absolutely working with a wide variety of partners. We couldn't do this without them; in fact, we even want to offer services by our partners and our partners as the ones selling this, not us. So this is absolutely a partner play and ecosystem play, and if anything it really is about our partners.”
VMware’s new edge compute packages will feature a complete suite of server hardware for infrastructure and gateway needs, courtesy of Dell Technologies enterprise infrastructure business, Dell EMC, which will include VMware Pulse IoT Center for monitoring IoT devices.
The solutions will include local compute capacity in combination with gateway devices to allow for real-time analytics at the edge, and customers will be able to license business analytics tools from a number of third-party partners.
The solutions will run across three main categories: remote locations such as oil rigs where harsh conditions and inconsistent power or data supplies may be a problem, factories where conditions are more stable but still fairly challenging, and retail branches where inter-branch communication is a priority.
Two initial solutions have been announced as part of partnerships with two companies. Surveillance and CCTV provider Axis Communications has partnered with VMware and Dell EMC to offer connected cameras and 4G routers, which will run on Pulse IoT Center, while Wipro has been tapped to offer a complete manufacturing solution for monitoring factory floor equipment.
Wipro offers its own IoT platform, Looking Glass, which will be combined with Pulse IoT Center; Looking Glass will handle predictive analytics and data processing, while Pulse will help with management, monitoring and security.
While VMware has only announced solutions for two use-cases, the company has indicated it intends to offer further solutions through new partnerships across a wide range of IoT applications. Spier also emphasised the need for the simplicity offered by an end-to-end solution, saying: “One of the customers that we're talking about has over 150,000 cameras that they will need to have managed, and that's just one use-case”.
“Building an edge computing solution today is a time-intensive exercise most enterprises can’t afford,” said Ray O’Farrell, VMware’s executive vice president & chief technology officer. “Today, VMware unveils hyper-converged edge computing solutions that are cost-effective and will enable customers to build and scale secure, use case-specific IoT solutions that work for them from the edge all the way to the cloud, relying on proven, tested software they already use and trust.”
The offering is currently limited to on-prem deployments, and a SaaS version is in the pipeline. Customers can also trial a beta version of the SaaS package. However, Spier has stressed that the new offering is designed to support a hybrid usage model.
“We're not focused just on on-prem, we are focused absolutely on the hybrid approach, and we believe a hybrid approach is the right approach,” she said. “The reason why is because even if you have great networking, if you're going to collect petabytes of data from your factory, you probably don't want to pay for the storage costs in the cloud, and you probably don't need all of that data for the deep learning that happens in the cloud.”
Instead, she said, customers have been asking for the ability to run certain data analytics tasks locally, allowing them to discard the data needed for these tasks before shuttling the rest of the data up to the cloud for further use.
The solution is reminiscent of AWS’ Greengrass offering, a similar edge computing product designed to enable IoT operations in remote or inhospitable locations through onboard compute. As IoT attracts more and more attention from major organisations, the race is on to create solutions that will enable them to overcome the challenges that can sometimes hinder the deployment of IoT products.
As part of this effort, VMware also announced it will be funding two awards in partnership with the US’ National Science Foundation. The prizes will be awarded to projects researching edge computing data infrastructure, with a total of $6 million up for grabs.
According to Creative Intellect analyst Bola Rotibi, VMware's move into edge computing is a smart one. "Its announcements for the additional ways in which it would support NFVs and its vision of the interplay between IT Clouds, Public Clouds and Telco Clouds, and how apps will sit between them, highlighted an organisation prepared for supporting different clouds with different players," she told Channel Pro.
"However, the company's recognition that more distributed computing at the edge would require a fleet of servers and hardware at the edge - which would require different ways to secure, ruggedise and manage - was not only a smart insight, but identifies how well placed the company is to both operate and deliver in this new market."
