It was 2013 when IEEE Com.
Magazine (2013) published my paper “Clouds of Virtual Machines in Edge
Networks”, a first seminal work on Edge Computing. Paper claimed (for the first time to my knowledge) the advantages of bringing the Cloud model towards the edge of a SDN-NFV network.
In 2014
ETSI released an introductory technical white paper on MEC, at that time
meaning Mobile Edge Computing, then renamed Multi Access Edge Computing
(MEC).
Technical speaking, MEC can be seen as an extension of the Cloud
Computing paradigm towards the edge (i.e., aggregation and access segments) of the
Telecommunications Networks.
As a matter of fact, the use of IT resources (computing, storage/memory
and networking), allocated at the edge of the infrastructure, can bring a
number of advantages, for example: to improve
QoS/QoE by reducing the network
latencies, to reduce costs in the Cloudification of the infrastructure towards
5G, to enable new service/biz models, etc:
In fact, in the medium-long term, it
is likely that the network infrastructures will be composed by a physical layer
(i.e., IT and network hardware and physical links) hosting dynamic software
platforms executing millions of software processes, implementing both network
and services components/functionalities (e.g., VNFs, Virtualized Network
Functions).
In these scenario, MEC aims at complementing Cloud Computing (it is
not replacing it, obviously…): for example, the so-called “slices”
of the network
infrastructure (e.g. future networks, 5G) may integrate both Cloud Computing and MEC
resource, requiring this
orchestration capabilities spanning across the
overall infrastructure.
Today, Operators are exploring
different strategies for MEC adoption, motivated by:
- costs savings in the Cloudification (SDN-NFV) of the infrastructure: for example using MEC for deploying smaller Central Offices at the edge (for example., Cloud CO inititative of Broadband Forum);
- revenues generation.
Regarding the latter, among the various approaches and biz models for revenue generations, decoupling MEC IaaS vs PaaS appear to enable cooperation between Telcos, who can join forces to boost the development of multi-domains open/ecosystems
(e.g., for V2X, Industry 4.0, etc.).
In particular, decoupling MEC IaaS vs PaaS
means:
- Telcos deploy MEC servers (e.g. Cloudlets) for providing infrastructure services (i.e., MEC IaaS);
- Third Parties (or also Telcos, themselves) deploy a MEC software platform/framework for providing platform services (i.e., MEC PaaS);
To
achieve this decoupling, and to allow different companies to develop and to
interwork, it is crucial well-defining what's MEC IaaS, MEC PaaS and standardizing interfaces between MEC IaaS and
PaaS.
In the menawhile, a numer of initiatives on MEC, in general Edge Computing, are emerging and flourishing, such as this one: https://www.akraino.org/
