Using Openness to Unleash Innovation at the Network Edge Contents Accelerating Innovation at the Edge

Using OpenNESS to Unleash Innovation at the Network Edge Contents Accelerating innovation at the edge

Accelerating innovation at the edge ...... 2 The phenomenal rise of smartphones in recent Hosting applications in the network edge or in the years has shown how essential mobile applications on-premise edge has a number of advantages: Introducing OpenNESS ...... 4 have become to users. You can choose from over • Latency is dramatically reduced. The latency Simplifying orchestration ...... 6 two million apps for your phone today1, and app to the cloud could be around 100 ms, but the developers have created new revenue streams for Streamlining application reuse ...... 7 network edge can achieve latencies of 10-40 ms, mobile devices resulting in over $101 billion being A platform for innovation ...... 8 and the on-premise edge could be as fast as 5 spent in app stores in 20182. The shift to computing ms (see Figure 1). This enables applications to be Working with other toolkits and libraries ...... 9 at the edge will enable new and more compelling created that better support the high bandwidth applications, such as augmented reality (AR), virtual Use case: Facial Recognition in Retail ...... 9 of 5G. Across all network types, lower latency reality (VR) and competitive gaming. The OpenNESS advantages ...... 10 can enhance quality of service for the mobile For Communications Service Providers (CoSPs), there subscriber, and enable new latency-sensitive use is a tremendous opportunity if they can tap into the cases such as public safety applications based talent pool of mobile developers. CoSPs’ challenge is on video, and industrial Internet of Things (IIOT). to unleash a new wave of innovation at the network Entertainment and infotainment applications edge, not just in consumer applications, but also in such as location-aware gaming, content delivery business and industrial applications that will create networks, AR, and VR are also possible. new revenue streams. • Backhaul is also reduced, because some data Following network functions virtualization (NFV) will never need to go to the cloud. This can cut initiatives, general purpose compute resources can network costs, in part because it enables the now be found throughout the network and in the CoSP to upgrade network access points to meet on-premise customer equipment. These platforms increased demand without necessarily needing to could host user-facing applications, alongside the upgrade the entire network path to the cloud. virtual network functions. Where appliances have not • Data sovereignty can be enforced, for example by yet been virtualized, edge computing can be enabled enabling data to be processed in the on-premise in parallel with NFV initiatives and help to build the edge so it never leaves the data owner’s site. business case for them. This can help with sensitive or highly regulated applications.

2 However, creating edge applications introduces new challenges. In the cloud, developers are used Small Cells to a “write once, run anywhere” flexibility. In the Wireline Fixed Access Video Licensed Unlicensed (vCCAP, POXN) network, they may need to be aware of where Healthcare their app will be hosted, so they can write code to DRIVER Manufacturing Regional Data ingest data. If the edge computing resources sit FOR EDGE Centers Drones close to the base station, the data might need to be Latency Bandwidth Energy Multi-Access Edge untunneled, for example. Deeper in the network, Security Retail Computing there might be a Gateway Internet Local Area Connectivity Network (SGi-LAN) interface to contend with. Transportation Wireless Access PCs Customer Premise Some cloud service providers have capabilities Equipment Base Stations Ram Phones to host some functionality at the edge, but these (uCPE, SD-WAN, Smart Cities Edge Compute Next Gen capabilities may be relatively limited, and may tie or XXX Modes) Central Office developers in to a proprietary framework.

There is a need for a flexible, open source platform that abstracts away the complexity of the network, so that developers can write their software for the DEVICES/THINGS ON-PREMISE EDGE NETWORK EDGE NETWORK CORE DATA CENTER/CLOUD edge as easily as they write for the cloud. Latency Varies 1 ms 5 ms 10-40 ms 60 ms 100 ms expectation

Figure 1: Hosting applications closer to user devices in the on-premise edge or network edge cuts latency significantly

3 Introducing OpenNESS

The Open Network Edge Services Software Figure 2 shows an abstract representation of the (OpenNESS) is an open source reference toolkit that architecture for OpenNESS. The OpenNESS platform makes it easy to move applications from the cloud itself is shown in green. There are two parts to to the network and on-premise edge. It provides a OpenNESS: single environment for hosting applications running • The OpenNESS edge node agent runs on the in locations such as customer premises equipment edge platform. It enables data to be ingested from and small cells (on-premise edge); or the Next IP, S1_U or SGI interfaces, and supports traffic Generation Central Office (NGCO), base station, or steering at 5G latencies, multitenancy, and service wireless access aggregation point (network edge). registration. The user application sits on the same When running their applications on OpenNESS, server and uses APIs to authenticate itself and developers don’t need to think about the platform access the network, via the OpenNESS software. that will host their application, the access network The APIs are inspired by the specification for that’s being used, or the underlying compute Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) created by technologies. This significantly lowers the barrier the European Telecommunications Standards to entry for developers who are experienced in Institute (ETSI). cloud development, but do not have an intimate • The OpenNESS Controller can sit in the data understanding of the communications network. center, the cloud, or at the edge for orchestration of the edge platforms. The controller enables the discovery and control of connected edge devices, and is used to deploy apps to those edge platforms. The edge controller uses a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) for easy application onboarding. CoSPs can also use the APIs to link to their own controller GUI environment.

4 Currently, the supported hardware is the Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor (which can be used to bring data center performance to the edge), Intel® Xeon® ublic D processor (which offers optimized performance Edge Node loud ommercial Service Orchestrators in space and power constrained environments), Edge Native App ublic loud App loud and Intel® Movidius products (which can be used onnector A to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge). Edge App A, EE Auth A ontroller A

Intel is working on integrating support for additional Edge ifecycle A Edge irtualiation A accelerators including field programmable gate OpenNESS Edge Node icroservices OpenNESS Edge ontroller arrays (FPGAs), SmartNICs, and GPUs. and ata lane icroservices

Authentication and authorization of applications and OS, ontainer untime Edge irtualiation A services are used together with the security features esource rovisionning, EA ommercial of Intel® hardware to help ensure platform security. ardware , A, Accelerators, N onfig OpenStackubernetes nfrastructure anagers S S

ore Network onfiguration A ommercial E lane ommercial E lane

A ellular ocal reakout Application Server (eg hybrid cloud) basestation ellular basestation

Figure 2: An abstract representation of the architecture for OpenNESS, showing how the software on the edge node and the controller software in the cloud work together with other technologies to create a complete edge platform

5 Simplifying orchestration

CoSPs need to create an edge platform that is not only OpenNESS includes a lightweight resource approachable for developers, but also easy to operate orchestrator for on-premise or Internet of Things at scale. (IoT) deployments.

There are several challenges associated with As the architecture shows, OpenNESS also works orchestrating edge services: with Kubernetes (and also, in the future, OpenStack). Kubernetes is used to provision edge resources • Existing infrastructure and service orchestration and configure the enhanced platform awareness solutions lack app awareness. A resource features for the network edge. Enhanced platform orchestrator such as Kubernetes, for example, awareness enables OpenNESS to take advantage of can manage the lifecycle of a pod containing the capabilities of the underlying Intel® architecture multiple containers that comprise an application. to optimize performance for the user applications, But Kubernetes does not have awareness of the by using parallel processing and/or any attached application itself. accelerators, for example. Although OpenNESS does • Some of the orchestration solutions are not include service orchestration, it has control APIs to proprietary, increasing vendor lock-in and link to a service orchestrator (see Figure 2). potentially increasing the diversity of orchestration Using OpenNESS, it is easier for CoSPs to create platforms that developers must be able to work a platform that scales efficiently, and is able to with. Given that there is no one way to orchestrate, orchestrate resources and applications effectively. it is difficult for an app vendor to create an app that works across all environments.

6 Streamlining application reuse

One of the concepts underpinning OpenNESS is that OpenNESS provides an API that includes (among there are two types of apps: other things) capabilities for consumer apps to discover all the active producer applications on the • Producers provide a service to other apps on the edge node, to subscribe to updates from a producer same edge platform. For example, a producer app, and to check which producer apps the consumer application might provide location services, has subscribed to. mapping services, transcoding services or AI services. A producer app cannot access end user This service mesh capability is called Edge traffic directly, but must receive it from a consumer Application Agent (EAA), and it makes it easier app. All producers use Transport Layer Security for diverse applications to work together, and for (TLS) to provide encryption and data security. capabilities to be reused across edge applications. A CoSP could choose to offer a platform to developers • Consumers can consume end user traffic and can that includes shared apps for video transcoding, optionally use services from producer apps on mapping, or location-based services. EAA also the same edge platform. For example, a content supports service chaining, enabling services to be delivery network, AR or VR application, or gaming built from multiple applications. app could all be consumers.

Producers publish their services to the edge node, and those services can be subscribed to by consumers. For example, there could be an AI onsumer App roducer App producer app, which provides a facial recognition service. A consumer app (for example public safety Consumes and Acts on data from enerates data to service or building security) could use that producer app and IoT/Mobile devices and Cloud Apps Subscribe to notifications Consumer Apps provide an incoming video feed to it for processing. N App ocation Services The producer app could be shared by other apps on the same platform, and the consumer app could use A App apping Services other producers too. SS App Transcoding Services ush updates aming App A Services

Figure 3: The Edge Application Edge (EAA) enables consumer apps to share producer apps for common services

7 A platform for innovation

One of the motives for edge computing is to enable It is not unusual to find different apps within the new services and applications, which can create new same enterprise environment that are hosted on revenue streams for app developers and CoSPs. different public and private clouds. It’s likely, then, It’s important, then, that the edge platform is as that applications running at the edge will need to flexible as possible to enable innovation. OpenNESS connect to different cloud platforms. Multi-cloud supports this with a microservices based cloud-native compatibility is fundamental for a successful edge architecture, which provides CoSPs with an easy platform. OpenNESS provides cloud connectors for option for accelerating their adoption of cloud native AWS Greengrass, Microsoft Azure IoT Hub, and Baidu solutions at the edge. IntelliEdge. For example, the AWS Greengrass Core and associated lambda functions can be deployed The microservices sit below the apps and above as either a producer or a consumer app, connecting the user plane, and can be found in the OpenNESS directly to the AWS cloud. libraries. A platform developer can pick and choose which specific functions will add value for them and OpenNESS also offers a Local Breakout capability more easily integrate with their existing cloud native that lets the developer run apps in a hybrid cloud solutions. The code is open source, so a CoSP can environment adjacent to the edge node (see Figure 2). customize its installation. Thanks to microservices, it’s easier to manage upgrades compared to updating a monolithic application.

Because OpenNESS is built on microservices and open APIs, other solutions can align with the OpenNESS environment more easily. For example, virtual network functions, user-facing apps, and orchestrators can use APIs to work with OpenNESS.

8 Working with other Use case: facial toolkits and libraries recognition in retail

The edge platform can be enhanced with the Intel® Intel, Foxconn Technology Group and Asia Pacific Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit for computer Telecom have demonstrated facial recognition vision, which can be hosted in a separate virtual applications in retail, based on OpenNESS. The machine or container on the same server and proof-of-concept showed how shoppers could use executed as an app in OpenNESS. For example, a facial scan for applications including cashless an application could use the Intel Distribution payment using facial recognition. The technology can of OpenVINO toolkit for object detection and also be used to enable access control. classification. The OpenVINO toolkit includes a In the demonstration, wireless cameras connected to consumer app for video inference, and a producer the Internet using small cell radio access nodes and app that activates an OpenVINO service and sends transmitted the shopper’s image to the local MEC notifications to the consumer app to change the platform, where it was processed. inference model. Hosting the application in the MEC platform helped Working together with the Intel® Media SDK, to cut latency and improve the customer experience. deployed in a similar way, OpenNESS can be used According to Foxconn Technology Group and Asia for video transcoding applications. Pacific Telecom, the payment authentication process can be completed within 0.03 seconds, making for a premium customer experience. Payment based on facial recognition can also help to reduce credit card fraud while reducing the risk of personal information leakage.

Figure 4: Intel, Foxconn Technology Group and Asia Pacific Telecom demonstrated facial recognition systems for retail, based on OpenNESS, in Taiwan

9 The OpenNESS advantages

By creating an edge platform based on OpenNESS, CoSPs can make it easier for software developers to bring their experience and creativity to the network. OpenNESS enables developers to write apps that will run on any edge environment, without needing specific coding for data ingestion, making the network edge a much more attractive target platform for them.

The microservices architecture enables CoSPs to accelerate their adoption of cloud native solutions at the edge, and helps them to more easily connect to multi-cloud environments. CoSPs can orchestrate services at scale and benefit from a cloud-native and microservices-based architecture.

OpenNESS is available to download now at https://github.com/open-ness. Find out more at https://www.openness.org/.

Find the solution that is right for your organization. Contact your Intel representative or visit www.intel.com/networktransformation

10 Learn more

• OpenNESS • Intel® Network Builders • Intel® Xeon® processors • OpenVINOTM toolkit • Intel® Media SDK

1 2.6 million apps on Android; 2.2 million apps on iOS. Source: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-statistics/ 2 App Annie Releases Annual State of Mobile 2019 Report, https://www.appannie.com/en/about/press/releases/app-annie-releases-annual-state-of-mobile-2019-report/

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