 The State of Edge is a vendor-neutral platform for open research on edge computing as is kind of dedicated to accelerating innovation for the edge. There is now a new State of the Edge report that looks at today's edge computing ecosystem. And to discuss this report, we have with us two guests, Matt Trifero, State of the Edge Co-Chair and CMO of Viparayo and Jacob Smith, VP of Bayon Metal Strategy and Marketing at Equinix. Matt, Jacob, it's great to have you on this panel. Great to be here. It's great to be here. Thanks for having us. I kind of gave a rough idea of the State of the Edge, but I would love to hear from you folks. Jacob, you can start and tell me what is it all about. And then Matt, after that I would love to have your views also. Great. Yeah. So the State of the Edge report has a long history, almost four years now. But it's all about bringing people together around a shared vision and a shared consensus around the edge. What does it mean? What are we talking about? What's going on? And so we've produced an annual report for the last few years, but this is the first one under the auspices of the Linux Foundation and the LF Edge project. So like you mentioned, it's a vendor-neutral report. We bring in a bunch of different perspectives and try to get our finger on the pulse of where is the edge at today and probably more important like where is it going next? Matt, how do you look at the State of the Edge? Yeah, so I came out of, come out of a slightly different point of view. You know, I grew up in the formation of cloud and the sort of transformation of an infrastructure. And one of the things that frustrated me as a marketer was how these terms that are very important for us to understand and define and interact with get co-opted by marketing people. And I'm a marketing person, right? So we felt it was really important to put the stake in the ground and really define what are we talking about? What edge are we talking about? Are there lots of edges? If so, do they have different names? And that was just the start of a journey. And it became, you know, really three projects. It became the open glossary of edge computing, which is a, you know, a dictionary of all the words that's open source. It's in a GitHub repo. It's the annual reports. And it's also the landscape, which is the projects and companies that are in the edge computing world. And now we're part of the Linux foundation. And all those are hosted underneath that the auspices of that governance structure. Thanks for explaining that, Jacob. And now, before we talk about the report, I do want to hear from you because when we do look at edge people would define it in whatever way they want to define it, you know, those terms, you know, when you're talking about cloud computing. So I want to know from you, how would you define this computing? Are we talking about IoT devices? Are we looking at Tesla as IoT on wheels? Or are we talking about edge data centers? So let's talk about just demystify that term itself. Yeah, so there are lots of edges and lots of ways to define edges. The Linux foundation, they have a white paper that's to be downloaded for free at LFedge.org. And it has a very good taxonomy of the different edges. You know, the edge that we're mostly interested in is the edge of the last mile network. There's two sides to it. There's a service provider side. And then there's a user or device side and both are really important. And with the financial model, we did take a different approach than most of the models that are out there. It's not a total market sizing. It's a sizing of the data center infrastructure required to implement the applications and use cases on both sides of the last mile network. And I think that was just a bias that, you know, Jacob and I brought to it because, you know, we're data center people, but it turns out to be a really interesting number. Yeah, yeah, I'd add to that and that the there are lots of edges and it's kind of evolving all the time. But the one that we've always described edge computing at is where we're putting computing closer to the data or to the experiences. And so obviously there's a wide range of what that means, depending on your use case, whether it's like you said, mobility or industrial IoT or an oil rig. But where we find is that the shifting going on is around the edge of the network where the internet is kind of in its next iteration or trying to get there and pushing out further and closer to where those experiences in the data are being created. And that's the edge computing that most people are curious about. And, you know, that's, you know, evolving pretty quickly. I think you'll see in the report that it's going to keep growing and changing even more quickly than it has in the past few years. But we noticed a lot of action related to, as you can imagine, the last year of being, you know, pandemic, pandemic, pandemic size. Is that a word where everything kind of got changed and turned on its head in some ways just accelerated and and edge computing is one of those things that we all felt, you know, in our lives as we kind of interacted over the zooms and went to school and did all those things. And that's kind of accelerating the conversation. And I think helping people bring around a more common understanding. Right. So what's the focus of this report on this specific use case? And what are some of the key highlights? Or, you know, something that you're like, Hey, this is something, you know, exciting from this report. Great. Let me kick us off. We decided to structure this report. You know, first of all, we got together as a committee and, you know, kind of wrestled with, well, what is this, you know, what's important this year? Right? What's important? What's going on? And what we ended up was four different main sections plus a refresh of the model that we did last year, the financial model. The four different sections that we did were based upon hardware, software, networks and critical infrastructure, sort of the main components of edge and edge computing. So we asked four different authors and had them come in and help give their perspective and research to each of those sections. And that's kind of the main structure of the report. In terms of some of the takeaways, maybe Matt, you want to speak to the highlights? Well, I also want to point out one of the things that we did last year that we did more deeply this year, it was a feature called postcards from the edge. So what we did is we invited contributions from leaders in the edge community, and offered the right of, you know, a small essay, a point of view, and we published those as kind of interstitials throughout the book. So you could actually download the white paper and just read those points of views and come away with a really interesting perspective on edge computing. Yeah, absolutely. The forecast model is the other part of the deal that I think, you know, most people pay attention to because there's a big number. And I think Matt always says it right, we know it's wrong, you know, it's just it's a forecast. And so understanding the future of, you know, what's the size of the edge computing markets, you know, we had an interesting case study here because we did a full bottoms up model last year. And then we had a year to see well, you know, what's right, what's wrong about that and kind of, you know, steer the ship in a new direction, which ends up being a pretty big number. Yeah, 180 billion dollars of data center infrastructure to support edge computing. And the big change from last year to this year was just the acceleration of edge use cases driven mostly by COVID-19. So that's that was really and the number is, again, it's built up from the from the ground up, it's built up, we look at, you know, all the different use cases and segments and the amount of compute that be required for them. And then it creates an aggregate amount of processing power in order to drive those applications and then converts that into, you know, basically kilowatts. And then that that you can use sort of standard formulas for converting kilowatts into dollars of infrastructure required to house that compute. Yeah, another big highlight was around hardware, right. So that was an area that I was particularly interested in. In 2020, we had a lot of big mergers and acquisitions announced, things like AMD buying Xilings or, you know, Nvidia buying or trying to buy ARM. And, you know, obviously, there's kind of a, you know, the end of Moore's law going on and the edges are really amazing place to watch that innovation happening. So we saw a lot of, you know, interesting hardware being produced and then being driven more and more by the influence of open source software. So open hardware too is becoming a trend. And that whole kind of, you know, physical component of how to how to deploy at the edge is a really big problem that that you can see being attacked from a number of different sides. Because it's kind of the opposite of what we've been doing in the cloud, you know, for the last, you know, 10 years putting a lot of things in a in a few places. Now the edge kind of pushes that model to a new place, which is how do you put a lot of different things in a lot of different places, especially when they're changing quickly. Right. Well, I'm also curious that what rule is because I didn't last year, if I'm not wrong, the government, you know, they released some spectrum for 5G. So what how is that helping the industry? Because that also allows you to build a lot of local networks. At the same time, I think you mentioned that, of course, acceleration because of this pandemic was there. And, you know, also focus on open hardware, open source technologies there. So can you talk about some more factors that are driving this adoption or any other kind of a specific highlight that you saw, which kind of, you know, they are like feeding into each other? Yeah, 5G is a really good example. Because 5G is not only an enabler for edge computing, it is also a consumer of edge computing. One of the big transformations in this, this G from the last G is virtualizing the network functions, which means that you can run significant parts of the telephone network, the cellular network on white box servers sitting in a data center. And those servers can do other can have other workloads running on them. Those servers could be owned by somebody else like a cloud provider. So there's a whole sort of interesting set of dynamics that are created by just rolling 5G out. And then the capabilities of 5G enable, you know, much faster communication, connecting to much a larger number of devices out on the edge, which again, will help fuel a lot of edge computing applications. When we do look at edge, how much concerns do you have, especially when we talk about networking, whether you talk about the first mile or the last mile, that people, if they don't have access to broadband, what's the point of having all these technologies around us? Well, to some extent, I, you know, that's what's the point of having a smartphone if you don't have access to spectrum. And there is, you know, a digital divide, not just in the United States, but worldwide. But one of the things that 5G is driving and some of the other innovations driving, I mean, you know, unlicensed spectrum is really interesting because it's bringing a whole new set of players in. There's a lot of open source now being contributed to edge computing. A lot of, I mean, you look at the magma project from Facebook, it's a multi-tenant evolved packet core that's open source. So I think that a lot of the things that are, the innovations that are that 5G is driving will accelerate the rollout of wireless broadband to areas currently don't have it, whether it's rural US or, you know, some other country. Yeah. And I would add that open source is a big driver of, you know, creating solutions to hard problems that are maybe niche. You know, some mass market solutions going to cover the very profitable ones where people have all the connectivity and all the reasons. But we see edge computing going in lots of different places. Matt mentioned, you know, new kinds of unlicensed spectrum. It's being deployed in disaster zones and in, you know, Native American Indian reservations and in rural communities where it's not profitable to service in normal ways. Also satellite, new kinds of connectivity. So it's definitely shifting, but I'm always fascinated, you know, by the role of open source and kind of open governance, allowing those kind of innovations to find their way into new use cases and fill in the cracks, which we're seeing, you know, low powered devices and open spectrum creating new kinds of, you know, experiences that previously, you know, you had to have major equipment and, you know, telecom deployments for. So certainly, you know, the more open that we can make certain parts of the stack, the more likely we are to bridge that digital to five. Yeah, you mentioned Native Americans and I interviewed MoralNet. They are using FreedomFi and all those open source technologies to bring connectivity there. One thing more is that you mentioned, and I sometimes feel that Linux Foundation now happened to be at the right place at the right time. So what role do you see LF edges playing? Number one is by bringing all these players who might also happen to be competitors under the same table to collaborate on these open source technologies. Number two is that since it's a big umbrella foundation, there are a lot of other projects that you leverage. Kubernetes is a good example, you know, I mean, there are Linux is there. So it also make it easy for cross pollination between industries who would not interact otherwise in the normal world. So talk about the role that LF and their LF edge is playing in in kind of furthering this adoption of open source in this space. Yeah, so I mean, open source in general, you know, everybody thinks they understand it, but they really understand the business function of open source and the reason that large companies are contributing to open source now is because there are based technologies that if we decide not to compete on, but all contribute to something that's in common and freely usable, then we can differentiate our business and products on top of that. You know, one of the great examples is like the 35 millimeter film, right? That the camera companies, you know, innovated on the cameras and the shutters and the lenses and the film companies on the emotion process and the developing process, but nobody tried to compete on the distance between the sprockets. And I think that this is just an example of that, but in much more complexity. Now, the Linux Foundation, one of the most powerful things it brings to projects is a really great governance model. So it's it's very hands off, but it's also very opinionated. And so projects that move into the Linux Foundation have an openness to them that is irrefutable. It really is a powerful governance model. And I think that LF edge in particular does two things when it helps to bring a lot of these projects together and create those cross pollinating conversations. But it also almost from a marketing standpoint, it helps bring these kinds of conversations to the top of the stack, because they're important conversations to be having because I mean, this is the next generation of the Internet. Yeah, I would agree. I think the edges and is one of the great examples of, you know, where you need an ecosystem, right? It's complex, it's specialized, you know, where you differentiate, like Matt said, is important. And so finding common standards and, you know, incubating technologies that are useful to all is a way to accelerate and to lower the cost of differentiation. So I think the ecosystem kind of culture that the, you know, Linux Foundation and the broader open source ecosystem brings is going to be especially critical to how the edge evolves, you know, and how open it is. And, you know, that's really kind of the springboard for innovation. Right. And it can also talk about if I'm not wrong, the state of edge was kind of anchor project for LFA, just the way Kubernetes was anchor for CNCF. Yeah. So the evolution, it's kind of a fun story how how the state of the edge. So when we wrote the very first state of the edge book, the first download, we had six or seven writers all working on it. And we decided that we should use the terms exactly the same way every time we use them. And that's simple things like, you know, should you capitalize it? What is, you know, what is, is there near edge and a far edge and IOT edge and a telco edge and all of it. So we built a style guide just for the guy. And I sent it around to peers of mine, saying, you know, give us some feedback. And I got overwhelmingly, oh, can I use this? Oh, here's a word you forgot all of it. So, so I called up the Linux Foundation. I said, I have a crazy idea. I don't think it's ever been done before. But what if we put the glossary into a GitHub repo, and we made it a project. So the very first, the entry point to the Linux Foundation with the open glossary of edge computing, which is exactly that. And then when the, the, the LF edge form, the open glossary was a starter project. And that's when they said to our organization, why don't you, you know, would you be willing to bring the entirety of your intellectual property over to our community and we'll help it grow and, and steward it. So we did that. So that became the, the open glossary project became a working group underneath the state of the edge. And that's the state of the edge got officially its landscape working group and its, its research working group. And Matt says organization for the state of the edge in a very broad way. We were really a collection of like-minded, you know, companies. And, you know, I think we had great traction. But it was like, like we talked earlier about the governance of, of, of the Linux Foundation and the culture there. That really injected a sense of, you know, maturity, frankly, to the state of the edge report that we were sustaining through a lot of passion for the project. And I think great shared values for it. But it's easy to have those things go away. You know, all it takes is, you know, a change in one of our sort of, you know, corporate mindsets to say, no, no, no, this is going to needs to talk all about my data centers, not your data centers. And so getting it into the LF edge at the ground up, I think it's going to be, you know, not only important to the LF edge project, I kind of give it a sense of, you know, you know, velocity around shared language, like Matt mentioned, but also to kind of keep true to like looking at the ecosystem in an open way, instead of a vendor specific way, which I think that that's pretty, pretty new for the Linux foundation. I mean, I wish I wish every LF umbrella group had a state of the, you know, state of the of the CNCF state of the Kubernetes ecosystem or something like that, because I would go I would read those every year. Initially, you also mentioned the predictions that were made earlier. So I want to, you know, put you as part of it. So looking at this report, what kind of predictions you are going to make, and you'll be brave enough, because I don't know if anybody said it back in that there will be pandemic and the whole world will change. But I'm sure a lot of people who said, you know, we will be doing a lot of remote work, we will be moving the cloud. See, I told you so it happened. So, so let's talk about what prediction do you have for for the next year or the coming months? Okay, well predictions are always hard. I mean, you know, would that we could go back and say I told you so about, you know, all the things that have unfolded this year. But I think there's a few a few things about edge computing that you can kind of count on. One is that there's going to be more stuff and more places that are going to be more different and more specialized. Partially, like our mama was built on, you know, Matt said, like kilowatts and power. There's just not enough power in the world to power all the experiences we want. We have to get more specialized and more, more efficient. And so I would expect to see a lot more specialized hardware, call it the, you know, mega trend of mass customization. You know, that's going to happen over the next couple years for sure. And the edge is going to be a huge place where that happens. The other prediction I'll give you, and I stole this from a good friend of mine who said, if you're excited about 5G, wait for 6G, which the whole idea is like the use cases for the infrastructure that we build are hard to know in advance. But once they once they hit, then it kind of compels the maturity of the technology. And then you move to the next thing. We're building for the future. And so, you know, there's going to be a next G and there's going to be a next edge and there's going to be a next whatever. But I think we'll, we'll find that sort of 5G use case, just like we found it with 4G with the, you know, the app store from Apple and the iPhone kind of made 4G relevant. And I think we'll find 5G is like killer use case over the next year or two. But then we'll be talking about 6G. Well, I'll make two predictions also. So the first prediction, I think we're already seeing the signs of, and that is this, this, this incredible acceleration of the work that's happening at the edge. And I think it's driven largely by the the awakening we all got with COVID-19 because every company that had, you know, a 10 year automation plan now has a three to five year automation plan. And so my prediction is that the companies that accelerate their automation plans will be the ones that are most successful. The other prediction I want to make is I'm going to say five years. I think in five years we're no longer to be talking about edge computing. I mean, maybe in like mining disconnected environments. But but it's just going to be the cloud and the internet. Just a new one? Or the extension of the old one. Yep. I mean, you know, it's when we get we had fiber to our homes, we didn't call it something else, but it was something else, right? So I just think I think the edge computing, the reason we talk about it as a thing today is because we need a place to gather where all this innovation is happening in a way to talk about it. But eventually I just be part of the cloud and the internet. Matt Jacob, thank you so much for a very interesting discussion about edge. And also the story behind the grocery and I'm pretty sure that soon, Matt, you will have a lot of job at your hand to for all the links, foundation projects. Now that I volunteered myself, thank you. All jokes apart, Jacob, Matt, thank you for talking to me today. And I look forward to talk to you folks again. Thank you. Thank you. This is really great. Talk soon.