Skip to main content

2021 Open Source Crystal Ball: What I See For IoT and Edge Computing

As Edge Computing architectures and the Internet of Things (IoT) continue to grow throughout multiple vertical markets, one trend that enterprises have made abundantly clear is that, in 2021, they expect their edge computing solutions and IoT technologies to be based on or leverage open source. This was confirmed in the most recent Eclipse IoT Commercial Adoption survey published in March 2020, which found that 60% of the organizations surveyed are factoring open source into their deployment plans. 

There are many reasons for this growing demand for open source. One significant factor is that  businesses want to tailor information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) builds to meet their specific requirements. This is best accomplished with solutions based on an open source model. In other words: while businesses certainly appreciate the cost and time savings open source offers, what they truly want and need is the control and flexibility it affords.

Perhaps predicting that open source software will play a big role in edge computing and the IoT is too obvious. With this in mind, let’s drill down a bit more and make some educated predictions on just how open source will impact IoT and edge computing in the coming year.


IoT Predictions

Open source AI/ML and IoT will become the foundation for automation in 2021 

Automation was a key buzzword in 2020 and for good reason. More and more IT departments are turning towards automating applications as a means of increasing productivity for everything from Industry 4.0 to smart grid solutions. Open source AI and ML solutions will provide an effective agile mechanism to realize this future. Eclipse DL4J is just one example of an open ML solution that delivers powerful functionality for automation in environments outside of a traditional data center, such as manufacturing and warehouse settings. 


Open source will help solve SCADA software interoperability

This prediction is a bit specific to the Industrial IoT (IIoT), but given the size of this market, everyone from Exxon to Intel are carefully building solutions based on open source to address this issue. While SCADA providers have fully embraced IoT as a concept, sector growth has been limited by lack of interoperability between proprietary systems. Open source IoT solutions, such as Sparkplug, will enable new innovations that finally allow for true widespread interoperability. 


Remote work and smart office applications will drive a need for open source IoT solutions

The pandemic is forcing a complete re-think of the office, from biometrics to security to environmental controls to worker safety. A key means of rapidly developing new solutions on this front will be to leverage open source solutions that drive permissionless innovation that are easy to use by everyone. 


Edge Computing Predictions 

2021 will mark the rise of the Hybrid Edge

Hybrid cloud was definitely one of the biggest buzzwords of 2020, but in 2021, we believe this concept will be applied to edge computing architectures. Just as hybrid cloud requires orchestration between public, private, and distributed compute architectures, so too will enterprises that may be deploying their own edge networks, using edge compute offerings from a cloud provider, and operating separate edge networks for different use cases (AI vs. IoT for example). 


Cloud providers will embrace open source edge computing

Late 2020 saw all three major cloud providers - AWS, Azure, and GCP - deliver their own edge offerings. We believe 2021 will not only see a continuation of this trend, but also see providers embrace open source edge solutions as a means of differentiation and to speed innovation within their own development efforts. 


Smart grid use cases will embrace the open source edge 

After a year of horrific natural disasters driven by climate change, combined with an incoming U.S. administration with a focus on green infrastructure, North America will see a sharp rise in smart grid innovation. The quickest way to get there? Open source edge computing. 


So, what do you think of my predictions? Let me know what you think! Whether I am correct or not, 2021 is sure to be be an exciting year in IoT and Edge Computing.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

[Guest Post] Edge Computing and Open Source in Europe: A New Hope

This is a guest post by Alberto P. Martí, VP of Open Source Community Relations at OpenNebula . For everyone in the European cloud market with a passion for open source, these are exciting times. For years, tech journalists and market analysts have been predicting that edge computing was going to bring a paradigm shift to the cloud, and now we are starting to see the form that this disruption is going to take—at least in Europe. Technically speaking, there is little doubt that deploying applications and processing data at the edge comes with a number of benefits, and not only in terms of reducing latency and improving user experience. We are talking about expanding service availability to better deal with infrastructure incidents, reducing data transfers and the energy consumption and security risks associated with them, as well as minimizing vendor dependency by expanding the number of available providers. It comes as no surprise that the European Union has identified edge computing a
Post a Comment
Read more

Eclipse IDE for Embedded Developers Now Runs on the Raspberry Pi!

The Eclipse IDE is the project that started it all for the Eclipse Foundation . From the beginning, Eclipse IDE was meant to run on multiple platforms; it now supports Linux, Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. Since it is written in Java, it also supports multiple processor architectures. However, support for 32-bit architectures has been dropped in version 2018-12. This meant recent versions of the IDE would not run on the Raspberry Pi anymore. The introduction of the Raspberry Pi 4 in June 2019 gave hope to Eclipse on Pi fans. With its 64-bit quad core ARM Cortex-A72, the Pi 4 was a good hardware platform to work with. It became even more attractive in May 2020, with the introduction of the 8Gb variant. The Eclipse community took notice of those developments. Version 2020-09 of Eclipse IDE now ships with experimental support for 64-bit ARM (aarch64) on Linux.  Those developments mean embedded and IoT developers can now work on the Raspberry Pi 4 by installing the plugins provided by the 
Post a Comment
Read more

The Edge of Things: A Name That Means a Lot of Things

I have a fantastic job. When people ask what I do, I say I manage IoT and Edge Computing programs at the Eclipse Foundation. This is true yet is an oversimplification. What I actually do is a bit more complicated than that. I need to keep an eye on over fifty relevant Eclipse open-source projects. At the same time, I help animate three distinct communities: the Eclipse IoT , Edge Native , and Sparkplug working groups. All three have something to do with IoT and Edge Computing, each with a slightly different angle. And here is my problem: it is hard to convey all the nuances of everything our IoT and Edge community does in a single word. IoT, of course, includes Edge Computing. Deploying compute, storage, and networking resources as close to the source of the data as possible makes complete sense. However, Edge Computing is an architecture that applies to many other use cases, such as gaming or videoconferencing. None of those two concepts completely encloses the other. And no single w
Post a Comment
Read more