Hewlett Packard Enterprise is joining a growing number of tech vendors that want to push much of the computing, intelligence and analytics for the Internet of things out to the edge of the network.
The company at its Discover 2015 show Dec. 2 in London unveiled new gateway devices designed not only to process, store and analyze the massive amounts of data collected by the billions of connected devices that make up the Internet of things (IoT), but also to manage network traffic by determining which data is useful and should be sent to the data center.
The new gateways are part of a partnership between Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Intel in which the two companies will jointly develop products—including gateways—that sit at the edge of the network, closer to where IoT devices and sensors are located. The companies said the new systems would use Intel’s Core i5 and low-power Atom processors. The partnership was announced Nov. 18.
“The new solutions today are important elements of our strategy of delivering more connectivity and computing power at ‘the edge,’ and helping customers maximize the value and minimize the risks from IoT,” Antonio Neri, executive vice president and general manager of HPE’s Enterprise Group, said in a statement.
The development of such edge devices that can manage the data generated by IoT devices will be important as the number of connected systems grows. Cisco Systems officials expect the number of connected devices to increase from 25 billion last year to more than 50 billion by 2020, with other organizations predicting even faster growth. Gartner analysts have said that there will be 6.4 billion connected devices, systems and sensors in use next year, a 30 percent jump from 2015. Cisco is predicting that Internet traffic worldwide will hit 2 zettabytes by 2019, driven in large part by the growth in the number of connected devices and people using them.
The value of the IoT lies in the data the devices and systems produce. Organizations want to be able to leverage the useful data to help drive business decisions that will help grow revenues and make them more efficient. They also want to make sure the data from these edge devices doesn’t overwhelm their networks. Putting systems at the network edge not only will help accelerate the collection and analysis of the data, but also ensure that only the most relevant data is sent over the networks to the data centers.
A growing number of tech vendors, including Cisco, Dell, EMC, VMware and Extreme Networks, are driving to create systems and components that will bring more capabilities to the network edge.
At the Discover show, HPE officials unveiled the first offerings in the company’s Edgeline IoT System portfolio. Both the Edgeline 10 and 20 sit at the edge of the network and offer a range of data aggregation, analytics and management capabilities. They’re each available in ruggedized, mobile and rack-mounted versions, and are certified to work with Microsoft’s Azure IoT Suite and will run Windows 10 IoT.
The EL10 is a price/performance-optimized gateway aimed at entry-level deployments and armed with components that have long lifecycles. The EL 20 offers higher compute capabilities and easy installation, and is designed for higher-volume deployments, according to company officials.
Upcoming Edgeline systems will incorporate the system architecture from HP’s Moonshot systems, which emphasize density, performance and power efficiency, all important considerations in the IoT, they said. Through the Moonshot architecture, the future Edgeline systems will offer greater investment protection and scalability.
The new gateways are available now in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan.
