LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation, announced the availability of Akraino Edge Stack Release 1, setting a framework to address 5G, IoT and a range of edge use cases.
LF Edge was first launched in January with a mission to create a unified open source framework for the edge. It started with more than 60 founding members and grew from there. At that time, Akraino Edge Stack was announced as one of its projects.
Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT at the foundation, said the Akraino project continues its momentum with operators’ network edge and the enterprise/IoT edge that emanates out of it.
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The set of blueprints connected to Akraino have really picked up steam in the edge community, he added. Akraino is now comprised of more than 11 blueprint families, and more than 19 specific blueprints are under development to support a variety of edge use cases. The community tests and validates the blueprints on real hardware supported by users and community members.
Kandan Kathirvel of AT&T, who serves as Technical Steering Committee Chair of Akraino Edge Stack, said a blueprint is not just a diagram; it’s real code that brings everything together in a way that users can download and deploy in their own environment. The blueprints in Release 1 cover everything from a larger deployment in a telco-based edge cloud to a smaller deployment such as in a public building like a stadium.
Going forward, plans are underway for Akraino Release 2, which will include both new blueprints and enhancements to existing blueprints, tools for automated validations, defined edge APIs and new community lab hardware.
Besides AT&T, contributing members to Akraino include Arm, Ericsson, Huawei, Juniper, MobiledgeX, Nokia, NTT, Red Hat, Seagate and Wind River.
Interestingly, the Linux Foundation released a statement on May 23 addressing the U.S. government's Entity List Ruling, saying the Huawei Entity List ruling was specifically scoped to activities and transactions subject to the Export Administration Regulation (EAR). The foundation explained that open source encryption software source code was reclassified by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) effective September 20, 2016, as “publicly available” and no longer “subject to the EAR.”
The organization added, “Open source software, collaboration on open source code, attending telephonic or in person meetings, participating in training and providing membership or sponsorship funds are all activities which are not subject to the EAR and therefore should have no impact on our communities."