Today’s episode features an interview between Matt Trifiro and Rodney Richter, Enterprise Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and member of the LF Edge Technical Advisory Council

Rodney has been with HPE since 2015, and previously held numerous positions over 19 years with AT&T, including Principal Network Planning Engineer responsible for AT&T Wireless and Wireline access network virtualization.

In this interview, Rodney takes us through the technological and logistical challenges of implementing edge solutions at the enterprise level, the thinking that led HPE to develop an entire product line of edge servers, the types of use cases that are getting traction today, and more.

Key Quotes

• "Everybody's looking for ways to optimize their business. As they invest in edge, it’s about what can they do differently and how do they make it more efficient…looking at ways to automate at the edge to be able to do things that they've done before, but haven't done as quickly or as efficiently."
• "Over the next 18 months, I think we're going to see the evolution of the network edge a lot more. At least in the open source community, a lot of applications and platforms are being developed that are going to help move things forward, especially evolving from some legacy platforms and seeing the data move from the data center out to the edge."
• "We've been in the edge business for quite a few years now and I see the next 18 months just starting to explode. Customers that are going to either implement [edge solutions] at their customer sites or they're going to be using network edge."
• "A lot of devices that are generating data typically were analog, now have moved into the digital age. So you now have the need to be able to collect and process that data at the edge…And you do that by developing a whole new product set….so you can run the applications that you typically run in the data center, but now you can run them at the edge."
• "The edge and the cloud and the data center and the mini clouds, it’s all going to be part of an overall solution. You need to look at the application that's going to be running or set of applications or platforms and what are the requirements for each. Some things will operate in the data center, some will operate in the cloud, and some will be at the edge. You're going to use all of those as a tool set to be able to develop an overall solution."

Sponsors

Over the Edge is brought to you by the generous sponsorship of Catchpoint, NetFoundry, Ori Industries, Packet, Seagate, Vapor IO, and Zenlayer.

The featured sponsor of this episode of Over the Edge is Packet, an Equinix company. Packet is the leader in bare metal automation. They are on a mission to protect, connect, and power the digital world with developer-friendly physical infrastructure and a neutral, interconnected ecosystem that spans over 55 global markets.  Learn more at packet.com.

Links

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn