Learn how autonomous management will revolutionize your edge computing approach.

If you’re a CIO in retail, manufacturing, distribution, banking, or just about any other industry, you’re building a strategy that will empower your lines of business to increase revenue and cost savings by adopting a massively decentralized computing architecture, otherwise known as edge computing.   

However, you’re concerned that traditional management approaches aren’t designed to manage and secure a topology with tens of thousands of edge servers and hundreds of thousands of edge devices in a cost-effective manner.  

How to handle the scale, variability, and rate of change of 5G and enterprise edge applications

As computing expands, the scale, variability, and rate of change of edge environments present a challenge that traditional management software was not designed for. It was originally built for centralized topologies with many servers (often standardized) in a few data centers or public cloud regions, with infrequent changes to the environment.

Now with edge, you have tens of thousands of servers and hundreds of thousands of edge devices that are much more heterogeneous, deployed in thousands of remote locations, with new locations or edge devices and servers being continuously added.  It’s nearly impossible for an administrator to understand the topology and relevant differences, which is critical when attempting to deploy new applications to the edge.

“Developing a successful edge strategy requires taking into consideration the complexity of management endpoints and recognizing that scale and variability are dramatically different from traditional on-premises or public cloud deployments.”

IDC White Paper, sponsored by IBM, “The Importance of Effective Operations in Unlocking Edge IT Value,” January 2020

Move to autonomous management

The massive scale, variability, and rate of change of edge environments requires a new approach—an autonomous management approach. Management actions such as deployment negotiation, agreement, execution, and on-going validation of workloads must be offloaded from the human administrator and onto autonomous management software.

This is achieved by asynchronous communication between software agents on edge endpoints and a management hub that constitute the autonomous management software. The actions carried out are based on the administrator intent but without his or her intervention, even during new endpoint onboarding.

Watch to learn more about autonomous management:

Intro to IBM Edge Application Manager

04:57

Intro to IBM Edge Application Manager

Administrators express an intent and autonomous management software executes in line with the intent

Here’s an example: “Deploy this application on any edge server with OpenShift 4.2, 8 cores free, 2GB of memory, 1TB of storage, not located in Toronto, Canada, not running an application owned by dept ABCD.”

Edge software agents autonomously decide if the edge endpoints they represent meet the intent set by the administrator, and if so, automatically initiate the installation of the application. The software agents continuously check for agreement validity over time. For instance, if the version of Red Hat OpenShift is later upgraded to 4.3, the agent can notify the administrator that the agreement is no longer valid, or it can automatically shut down the application, all without administrator initiation or intervention.  

With autonomous management, a single administrator can manage tens of thousands of endpoints without human initiation or intervention. 

Your house is becoming autonomous, isn’t it time your management software did?

Take your next steps in edge computing

This is truly an amazing time. The convergence of 5G, edge computing, and AI will spark a level of innovation that hasn’t been seen before. IBM believes enterprises can use edge IT to enable faster insights and actions, maintain continuous operations, and provide new customer experiences.  

More from Cloud

Strengthening cybersecurity in life sciences with IBM and AWS

7 min read - Cloud is transforming the way life sciences organizations are doing business. Cloud computing offers the potential to redefine and personalize customer relationships, transform and optimize operations, improve governance and transparency, and expand business agility and capability. Leading life science companies are leveraging cloud for innovation around operational, revenue and business models. According to a report on mapping the cloud maturity curve from the EIU, 48% of industry executives said cloud has improved data access, analysis and utilization, 45% say cloud…

7 min read

Kubernetes version 1.27 now available in IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

< 1 min read - We are excited to announce the availability of Kubernetes version 1.27 for your clusters that are running in IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. This is our 22nd release of Kubernetes. With our Kubernetes service, you can easily upgrade your clusters without the need for deep Kubernetes knowledge. When you deploy new clusters, the default Kubernetes version remains 1.25 (soon to be 1.26); you can also choose to immediately deploy version 1.27. Learn more about deploying clusters here. Kubernetes version 1.27 In…

< 1 min read

Redefining the consumer experience: Diageo partners with SAP and IBM on global digital transformation

3 min read - In an era of evolving consumer preferences and economic uncertainties, the beverage industry stands as a vibrant reflection of changing trends and shifting priorities. Despite the challenges posed by inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, a dichotomy has emerged in consumer behavior, where individuals untouched by the crisis continue to indulge in their favorite beverages, while those directly affected pivot towards more affordable luxuries, such as a bottle of something special. This intriguing juxtaposition highlights the resilient nature of consumers and…

3 min read

IBM Cloud releases 2023 IBM Cloud for Financial Services Agreed-Upon Procedures (AUP) Report

2 min read - IBM Cloud completed its 2023 independent review of IBM Cloud services and processes. The review report demonstrates to its clients, partners and other interested parties that IBM Cloud services have implemented and adhere to the technical, administrative and physical control requirements of IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services. What is the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services? IBM Cloud for Financial Services® is designed to build trust and enable a transparent public cloud ecosystem with features for security, compliance and…

2 min read