2019 Event Highlights

“Computing explodes at the network edge” is how leading cloud & tech journal SiliconANGLE described the key takeaways from Edge Computing World last week.

Edge Computing is clearly one of the hottest sectors in tech right now and their enthusiastic headline reflects the fantastic energy, and diversity of activity and immediate opportunities in Edge Computing that were apparent at the event.

Bringing together over 350 Edge executives, users and developers from the US, Asia, Africa and Europe, the 2019 event examined the key use cases for edge and debated the diverse technical solutions available.

The Edge Computing World keynotes opened with user presentation from Procter & Gamble, the Automotive Edge computing Consortium, Cloud Gaming platform Hatch (part of Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds), and VR platform HTC Vive, each of whom gave their perspectives on why their sector needs edge computing in order to expand their businesses, and what their requirements from suppliers might be.

Leading Silicon Valley investor Steve Jurvetson also gave an insightful presentation on the drivers towards edge AI and the inevitable rise of computing at the edge.

MobiledgeX continued on the use case theme, with CEO Jason Hoffman opening a half developer workshop giving a deep dive into Edge Use Cases to help developers understand how to engage with edge opportunities.

One of the key questions for the market is around the strategies of the major service providers, especially hyperscale cloud providers and carriers. Day two keynote focussed on exactly that area. Adrian Cockroft, VP Cloud Architecture Strategy of Amazon Web Services, gave an extensive insight on how AWS sees the edge opportunity, including their latest Edge services including Outposts and Wavelengths.

Alex Resnik, Chair of ETSI Mobile Edge Computing, hosted a discussion with Adrian & Paul Savill of CenturyLink looking at the go to market opportunities for carriers and cloud provider and how they might collaborate.

AI at the Edge was a significant theme within the event. A highly engaging panel Chaired by Param Singh of Cisco debated pragmatic AI with Chick-Fil-A & Amazon Alexa, whilst our Hackathon attracted over 50 developers to work on the theme of Edge AI.

The Edge Implementation track centered the appropriate architecture & management for applications at the edge. Brian Chambers, Chief Architect of Chick-Fil-A detailed a kubernetes based approach to the restaurant chains edge deployment; Chetan Venkatesh, CEO of Macrometa and John Thomason, CTO of EDJX both advocated a serverless approach; Todd Papaioannou, COO of edgeworx advocated an alternative edge-native approach.

Debate was rife in the event audiences, and it’s clear that edge application architecture is going to be a huge question over the coming year. We will focus on it heavily in future Edge Computing World webinar and events in the coming months…

We were also delighted to recognize Farah Papaioannou as the inaugural Edge Woman of the Year during Wednesday’s keynote. This EWoY process was initiated by the State of the Edge in Partnership with Edge Computing World, and seeks to elevate the profile of female talent within the industry. Farah was chosen from a highly competitive list of 10 finalists each of whom has shown strong leadership in their field.

It’s clear that female talent is more than ready and able to help provide its share of the many leaders that this fast expanding business sector will need if it’s to meet its huge potential in the next few years.

Monday Dec 9th saw our “D: All Thing Decentralized” Summit launched to massive acclaim and support from the industry. Edge Computing World was widely applauded for its leadership in bringing together the converging fields of DApps and Distributed Computing. The launch of Topio’s DApps landscape created considerable excitement in the audience.

Thursday 12th saw our Edge Economics workshop, a fascinating discussion for a group of senior executives grappling with the monetization strategies in this emerging market space.