Akraino Edge Stack Issues Premier Release, Sets Framework to Enable 5G, IoT Edge Application Ecosystem

• Inaugural release unifies multiple sectors of the edge across disciplines, including  IoT, Enterprise, Telecom, and Cloud
• Delivers tested and validated deployment-ready blueprints
• Creates framework for defining and standardizing APIs across stacks, via upstream/downstream collaboration

SAN FRANCISCO –  June 6, 2019 – LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced the availability of Akraino Edge Stack Release 1 (“Akraino R1”).  Created via broad community collaboration, Akraino’s premiere release unlocks the power of intelligent edge with deployable, self-certified blueprints for a diverse set of  edge use cases.

Launched in 2018, and now part of the LF Edge umbrella, Akraino Edge Stack is creating an open source software stack that supports a high-availability cloud stack optimized for edge computing systems and applications. Designed to improve the state of edge cloud infrastructure for enterprise edge, over-the-top (OTT) edge, and carrier edge networks, it offers users new levels of flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, to maximize the applications and functions supported at the edge, and to help ensure the reliability of systems that must be up at all times.

“Akraino R1 represents the first milestone towards creation of a much-needed common framework for edge solutions that address a diverse set of edge use cases,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation.

“With the support of experts from all across the industry, we are paving the way to enable and support future technology at the edge.”

About Akraino R1

Akraino R1 delivers the first iteration towards new levels of flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, maximize efficiency, and deliver high availability for deployed services. It delivers a deployable and fully functional edge stack for edge use cases ranging from Industrial IoT, Telco 5G Core & vRAN, uCPE, SDWAN, edge media processing, and carrier edge media processing. As the premiere release, it opens doors to further enhancements and development to support edge infrastructure.

Akraino is currently comprised of 11+ blueprint families with 19+ specific blueprints under development to support a variety of edge use cases. The community tests and validates the blueprints on real hardware labs supported by users and community members.

Akraino R1 includes 10 “ready and proven” blueprints, including:

• • Radio Edge Cloud (REC), part of the Telco Appliance Blueprint Family, REC is a telco- grade edge cloud platform for  containers. It’s main use case is supporting the near real-time RAN Intelligent Controller, a new network element that enables external applications to control aspects of the 5G radio network. REC is the first example of the Telco Appliance Blueprint family which provides a reusable set of modules that will be used to create sibling blueprints for other purpose tuned near real time appliances.
  • Integrated Edge Cloud (IEC) Type 1 (Small Edge) & 2 (Medium Edge) is a platform that enables new functionalities and business models on the network edge. It targets telco applications with small and medium deployments of Edge Cloud and supports Arm processors and architecture.
  • The Network Cloud family of blueprints enables hardware configuration and fully automated deployment of multiple edge sites from a remote Regional Controller. Specific Network Cloud blueprints in R1 include Unicycle with SR-IOV; Unicycle with OVS-DPDK; and Rover, which supports multiple Telco and Enterprise edge use cases including 5G.
  • The StarlingX Far Edge Distributed Cloud blueprint addresses edge and far edge use cases at high-density locations such as malls, airports and sports stadiums to support value added services (such as caching, processing, and analyzing data) at these events and locations.
  • Edge Lightweight and IOT (ELIOT) supports use cases for IOT gateway and uCPE (SD-WAN). Addressing Industrial IoT, smart cities, and uCPE, ELIOT enables a lightweight software stack which can be deployed on edge nodes with limited hardware capacity.
  • The Kubernetes-Native Infrastructure (KNI) Provider Access Edge blueprint leverages best practices from Kubernetes to manage edge computing stacks at scale and with a consistent, uniform user experience from the infrastructure up to the workloads, on bare metal or public cloud.

Akraino Edge Stack is working in an iterative approach with continuous automation and enhancements. Additions and enhancements will be made to the baseline functionality delivered in Akraino R1.

More information on Akraino R1, including links to documentation, can be found here. For information on how to get involved with LF Edge and its projects, visit https://www.lfedge.org/.

Looking Ahead

The community is already planning R2, which will include both new blueprints and enhancements to existing blueprints, tools for automated blueprint validations, defined edge API’s, and new community lab hardware.  

Linux Foundation general manager of Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, Arpit Joshipura, will give a keynote presentation at Open Source Summit China about open source edge technologies on Tuesday, June 25.

LF Edge will host a workshop focused on Akraino and other LF Edge projects onsite at Open Source Summit North America, August 21-23 in San Diego, Calif. entitled “State of the (LF) Edge;” more details are available here.

Support from Contributing Members

Arm
“Our unique combination of Arm® Neoverse™ IP, software, and open source collaborative ​efforts underscore our commitment to enabling developers with the tools needed to seamlessly design and deploy solutions scaling from edge to cloud,” said Kevin Ryan, senior director, Software Ecosystem, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm and LF Edge Governing Board Member. “We are incredibly proud to support the work the Akraino community is doing as we help our ecosystem build the next generation infrastructure.”

AT&T
“We’re very excited for the first release and the continued progress of Akraino,” said OliverSpatscheck, former Akraino Governing Board chair and assistant vice president at AT&T Labs.“AT&T is proud to be part of this community, and we remain committed to supporting an open source first strategy. Akraino is one of the many success stories of open source, and we look forward to accelerating innovation through collaboration.”

Ericsson
“Congratulations to the Akraino community on their first release and the value it brings to the open source Edge ecosystem,” said Martin Backstrom, head of Technology & Portfolio, Solution Area – Cloud & NFV Infrastructure, Ericsson. “Ericsson is at the forefront of 5G evolution driving innovation across edge computing, cloud native, AI/ML, Automation, Orchestration and supporting and contributing code to various open source projects. In Akraino, Ericsson contributed and validated Network Cloud Unicycle with OVS-DPDK blue print and also introduced support for OVS-DPDK in Airship. We are looking forward to continuous growth of Akraino to support more use cases across 5G, Edge and IoT areas in the coming releases.”

Huawei
“Huawei congratulates to the first successful of Akraino. There are many scenarios for edge computing, and the market space is huge. Only truly open platforms can release the potential of edge computing. The open source blueprints provided by the Akraino community provides a collaborative platform for building industry factual standards and fostering a rich application ecosystem to accelerate industry maturity. As digitalization reaches every industry and organization, the edge and cloud collaboration is becoming more important. Huawei is pleased to be working together with partners on the ELIOT blueprint for enterprise edge and IoT gateways, and will further contribute more blueprints.”  – Bill Ren, Chief Open Source Liaison Officer, Huawei

Intel
“The Akraino Edge Stack release represents a significant milestone for open source collaborations in edge computing to reflect alignment across industry segments on common integration, validation criteria and tools for solution stacks. Blueprints, also known as common solution stacks, for network and edge cloud use cases will be essential for Akraino adoption at scale. Intel looks forward to helping further drive community involvement and adoption across markets, including Industrial IoT.” – Imad Sousou, corporate vice president and general manager of System Software Products, Intel Corporation

Juniper
“The momentum created by the Akraino and LF Edge communities has been remarkable. In collaborating with other community members, the group has helped drive a fully-integrated, deployable stack for the provider access edge for release 1 of Akraino,” stated Sukhdev Kapur, Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks. “Akraino is a diverse community whose charter is to drive multiple edge use cases and provide end-to-end fully integrated and tested solutions that are reproducible and deployable. I applaud my fellow Technical Steering Committee Members whose contributions will surely help drive innovation of cloud-native capabilities at the edge of production networks.”  

MobiledgeX
“We at MobiledgeX are excited to be an active contributor to the Akraino R1 blueprints and to be leading the Developer API subgroup. We will contribute our own developer facing APIs and ensure applications can easily discover and take advantage of the Akraino powered Edge infrastructure,” said Sunay Tripathi, chief technology officer, MobiledgeX.

Nokia
“Nokia celebrates the Release 1 of Akraino and the Radio Edge Cloud (REC) project. Nokia brings to REC its long experience in building network elements, creating a telco grade container platform that is optimal for edge cloud deployments, such as O-RAN’s RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC). We are proud to be members of Akraino and to participate in creating key pieces of the future Radio Access.” – Tommi Hiltunen, head of Cloud Infrastructure R&D at Nokia Mobile Networks, Cloud RAN

NTT
“LF Edge has accelerated edge innovation effectively engaging traditional telecom service providers, leading edge IoT developers and other networked stakeholders in open source projects. We regard LF Edge as one of the most essential  open ecosystems for cross-industry collaboration in the 5G era. Akraino Release 1 is the first major step towards encouraging  deployment of innovative edge architecture and implementation of 5G use cases. We actively promote edge computing strategy and collaborative development within the Akraino project and are looking forward to LF Edge’s continued progress with the support from the Community.” –  Yukari Tsuji, vice president, head of NTT Network Technology Laboratories, NTT Corp.

Red Hat
“Red Hat congratulates The Linux Foundation Edge and the Akraino open source community for achieving this important milestone. We are encouraged by the progress of the efforts in the Akraino project and we will continue to support its continued evolution and progress in the project as well as through our related contributions to VCO with OPNFV, and our continued efforts to make NFVI manageable at the network edge. We look forward to helping build solutions in the very important areas of Edge and IoT.” – Tom Nadeau, technical director, NFV, RedHat

Seagate
“Seagate congratulates the LFEdge community on this successful release, which is a key milestone in driving the edge architecture and doing that with a true partnership approach. Building a flexible solution that enables businesses across industries to adapt and grow is critical to Seagate. We are excited to be working alongside the community to advance the architecture of the edge, and to drive data management best practices.” – John Morris, chief technology officer, Seagate

Wind River
“The StarlingX project has defined a Far Edge Distributed Cloud blueprint that provides a fully featured cloud for distributed edge use cases. We’re looking forward to further collaborating with the Akraino community, the LF Edge and other upstream communities to innovate and solve critical problems for the edge. The Far Edge Distributed Cloud blueprint integrates StarlingX with the EdgeX Foundry core APIs and is a good example of collaboration between edge projects, each providing key capabilities.” – Glenn Seiler, vice president, Open Source Strategy, Wind River

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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