20 Billion Edge Devices?!

Were you aware that there are projected to be 20 Billion (with a B) edge devices in use by 2020 (next year)?!

I wasn’t either. It’s just not the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night.

But apparently it is exactly the kind of thing that keeps some people up. They worry about how edge applications are going to perform like edge applications are supposed to perform when there are so many of them that need to communicate with each other and they’re on different operating systems, different clouds, and a zillion different kinds of hardware.

So instead of just worrying, a group of these very inspired individuals (and generous corporate sponsors) have gotten together to try to make everything a lot more… interoperable. To keep latency low and processing speeds high. To allow all the emerging edge goodness to continue to emerge unimpeded by a lack of coordination.

This group is called LF Edge, and it was announced in late January by the Linux Foundation. I was intrigued by it, so I invited Arpit Joshipura, General Manager at the Linux Foundation to come on the podcast and help us understand why LF Edge was needed, which projects are already part of it, and how new projects can become part of it.

He also spent some time answering my cohost Pete Johnson’s insanely technical questions about what the edge really is and how it should ideally work. But even more importantly, Arpit explained why every IT organization needs to stay aware of and involved with developments in edge technology. Not just telecoms, service providers, and manufacturers of IoT devices, but everyone. If you’d like to hear it for yourself, please check out Episode 71 of the Cloud Unfiltered Podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, YouTube, or the podcatcher of your choice.