VMware extends edge and IoT solutions

At Mobile World Congress 2019, VMware has announced a complete software stack for edge devices so customers can manage their edge devices and create a secure foundation for generating intelligent insights with IoT data. The software stack leverages the combination of the lightweight Linux operating system, Photon OS 3.0, which has been optimized for cloud native, containers, edge and IoT environments, and VMware Pulse IoT Center, a secure, enterprise-grade IoT device management and monitoring solution

  • Friday, 1st March 2019 Posted 5 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Building on top of open source software such as Linux has enabled organizations to speed innovation by allowing them to focus on delivering differentiated features and value targeted at unique or specific use cases or industries. In the fast-moving and quickly changing technology space that is IoT, turning to open source for underlying foundational components makes sense.

 

Together, Photon OS and VMware Pulse IoT Center create a digital foundation at the edge. This foundation can support multiple IoT use cases across the value chain of any organization with a consistent, secure and scalable infrastructure that is fully supported by VMware.

 

Photon OS 3.0 release   

The newly released Photon OS 3.0 introduces ARM64 support, installer improvements and updated packages. Additionally, Photon OS 3.0 provides enhanced package management and a new Driver Development Kit (DDK) to facilitate the building and adding of custom device drivers to Photon OS. Photon OS provides an open, flexible, and stable foundation with support for edge, IoT, and modern application environments.

 

 

VMware Pulse IoT Center and Photon OS Strengthen Edge and IoT Use Cases

Maintaining a strong security posture across the entire infrastructure is a critical requirement for any IoT deployment. Running the Pulse IoT Center agent with Photon OS on IoT devices enhances security of these otherwise highly vulnerable devices with certificate, DNS, and security token services. Further, Pulse IoT Center over-the-air update capabilities can deliver security patches and bios updates to IoT devices as well as updates to the Photon operating system running on edge devices.

 

Photon OS and Pulse IoT Center support containers running cloud native applications including data an analytics and data filtering close to the point of data origination found in most IoT use cases. As more and more IoT use cases require data processing and real-time decision making at the edge, this trend of running data analytics at the edge will continue to grow. 

 

Additionally, Photon OS 3.0 includes the latest EdgeX open source packages for organizations who want to leverage EdgeX’s open microservices interoperability framework in their IoT environments. The minimal Linux distribution also includes pre-packaged cloud-ready images for rapid deployment on Google Compute Engine (GCE), and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), as well as Microsoft Azure. Support for Dell EMC Edge 3000 and 5000 gateways is included via specific drivers and an optimized installer.

 

Organizations implementing edge and IoT initiatives require solutions that reduce complexity, secure edge infrastructure at scale, and support innovation. Leveraging Photon OS with VMware Edge and IoT Solutions, including Pulse IoT Center, helps implement a digital foundation that can support multiple IoT implementations with a single, secure, scalable edge to cloud architecture.