(BEIJING, November 29, 2018) -- The 2018 Edge Computing Industry Summit opened today in Beijing under the theme “Edge Intelligence, Edge-Cloud Collaboration”. Sponsored by the Edge Computing Consortium (ECC), the largest and most influential edge computing industry summit event was attended by more than 600 people, including government officials, industry association leaders, leading industry experts, top scholars, journalists, analysts and edge computing industry ecosystem partners from Europe, the United States and China. With the focus on technological innovation, business practices and industry development, the summit had in-depth discussions on edge computing trends and frontier technologies, gave a centralized display of the latest edge computing industry applications, and built consensus on advancing the healthy and sustainable development of the edge computing industry.

The summit consisted of a main forum and two sub-forums on edge intelligence and edge-cloud collaboration, respectively, and hosted a dozen of keynote speeches and more than 20 technology presentations, covering popular technologies including TSN, AI, SDX, big data, blockchain and 5G. ECC members such as Huawei, Intel, Shenyang Institute of Automation, China Mobile, Dahua, Digital China, Sansi, Hewei, ISStech, SIASUN and 99Cloud demonstrated, through presentations and on-site interactions, their rich innovative industry-leading applications and solutions covering intelligent buildings, intelligent water management, intelligent surveillance, intelligent vehicle management, intelligent power distribution terminals, industrial manufacturing edge cloud, intelligent manufacturing, industrial internet of things (IIoT) and OPC UA over TSN, showing the latest applied technologies and business practices of edge computing.

Mr. Swift(Shaowei) Liu, Vice Chairman of ECC and President of Network R&D Department in Huawei, introduced the operation progress of ECC.

ECC expands industry ecosystem, continually growing industry influence

As the largest industry organization in edge computing, ECC has over the two years since its establishment been committed to expanding the edge computing industry ecosystem and now has over 200 academic and industrial members covering research institutes, telecom operators, manufacturers, smart city solution providers, energy and power companies and ICT vendors. The joining of China Mobile as an executive board member this year marks the ECC industry ecosystem’s expansion from enterprise, IoT and IIoT applications to telecommunications.  

ECC and IEEE Strategy Cooperation Signing Ceremony

At the summit, ECC and IEEE signed a memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation, in which they express their commitment to deepening cooperation in fields including edge computing standards, technologies, testbeds, brands and markets based on the edge computing explorations, practices and achievements of IEEE and ECC, creating industry-related opensource opportunities, accelerating edge computing industry incubation, and promoting the robust development of the edge computing industry.

ECC has entered strategic cooperation with major industry organizations to advance edge computing industry development. It has signed an MoU on cooperation with OPC Foundation to promote TSN development and achieve collaboration based on standards. It has also maintained cooperation with the Alliance of Industrial Internet by leveraging their respective industry advantages and influence to jointly drive industry research and application promotion of edge computing reference architectures, edge-cloud collaboration and “OPC UA over TSN” and accelerate industry cooperation.

In Europe, ECC member Huawei has joined hands with Fraunhofer FOKUS, the largest applied research institute in Europe by co-organizing Europe’s largest Edge Computing Forum (ECF) and demonstrating an edge intelligence testbed based on time-sensitive networking, which has further deepened cooperation and exchange with the edge computing industry in Europe and propelled the global development of edge computing.

Towards a unified architecture based on integration of industry resources

ECC has been actively involved in formulation of related industry standards to facilitate industry innovation and technological cooperation. At the summit, ECC and AII jointly released “Edge Computing Reference Architecture 3.0” and “White Paper on Collaboration between Edge Computing and Cloud Computing”. The first document analyzes the background and mission of edge computing, emphasizes the concept and value of edge computing, explains the Edge Computing Reference Architecture 3.0 on different dimensions including horizontal architecture, vertical industries, functional view, implementation view, business view and use view, and shares business practices of edge computing in extensive areas including internet of elevators, industrial robots, energy efficiency management, predicative maintenance of rail transport equipment, internet of energy and smart transport. It provides guidelines for edge computing innovation, application R&D and industry development. The second document points out that edge computing and cloud computing don’t exclude but complement each other and their collaboration will magnify their respective value and it explains the capabilities and significance of edge-cloud collaboration on three layers and in six categories.

Drive innovation in key technologies to accelerate commercial applications

Operating through horizontal working groups and vertical industry committees, ECC has since its establishment been committed to creating innovative edge computing solutions and tapping edge computing’s industry value and application potential by developing testbeds with ecosystem partners. In 2018, ECC has incubated nine testbed solutions covering smart manufacturing, smart transport, edge cloud platform and OPC UA over TSN. So far, it has completed more than 30 testbed schemes. In addition, ECC members have also made important breakthroughs over the past year, including Huawei’s edge cloud services, Atlas 500 AI edge station with industry-leading AI processing ability, and lightweight edge computing real-time operating system LerOS; Intel’s Movidius Myriad X VPU, a dedicated hardware accelerator for deep neural network inferences; and the launch of the first industrial edge computing platform, “Source of Things”.  

At the 2018 Hannover Messe industrial fair, ECC and more than 25 international organizations and industry-leading vendors jointly released the OPC UA over TSN smart manufacturing testbed supporting six industrial internet scenarios that delivers true machine, man and thing interconnectivity. The OPC UA over TSN open internet also received the “Award of Ten Advancements of Intelligent Manufacturing” at the World Intelligent Manufacturing Summit 2018.

ECC members including Huawei, Intel, ARM and China Mobile have also actively taken part in the Akraino Edge Stack project and jointly launched the enterprise-grade IoT Blueprint to promote edge computing industry development.

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About the Edge Computing Consortium (ECC)

The Edge Computing Consortium (ECC) is the world’s largest alliance organization to focus on edge computing with more than 200 industrial and academic members including Huawei, Intel, ARM, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bosch, China Mobile, Honeywell, ABB, Schneider, Schindler, Infosys, Mitsubishi, HollySys, Fraunhofer FOKUS, McAfee, 360, NI and OSISoft. It aims to build a cooperative platform for the edge computing industry that will give impetus to openness and collaboration in the Operational Technology (OT) and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industries and stimulate the healthy and sustainable development of edge computing.