ETSI and OpenFog Consortium work together to bring mobile applications to the network edge
European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the OpenFog Consortium announced they are working together to develop fog-enabled mobile edge applications. The companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to pave a path forward for businesses seeking 5G’s “mission-critical and data-dense applications through fog computing and networking, and thus reduce technical overlap across the multitude of domains.”
The OpenFog Consortium is an alliance of high tech companies and academic institutions created a couple years ago by ARM, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Princeton University. The aim of the group is to foster the deployment of fog computing technologies by leveraging an open architecture framework. ETSI is a non-profit organization that determines different types of global standards for the telecom industry.
OpenFog will work with the ETSI Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) Industry Specification Group (ISG). The two companies will collaborate on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) standardization and interoperability requirements. MEC is able to manage different multi-access edge hosts deployed by various networks. The OpenFog Reference Architecture will build upon the mobile edge, providing a network hierarchy of fog nodes that interface between cloud and edge. This helps boost interoperability across operators through a network hierarchy of fog nodes, according to the organizations.
As outlined in the agreement, the companies will first focus on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which support edge computing interoperability. ETSI recently released a package of APIs, which the organizations said have properties that can be implemented in the OpenFog Reference Architecture.
The specification for ETSI MEC also includes an API framework for deploying services provided by locally hosted or remote authorized applications. The organizations said adopting APIs across the OpenFog and MEC architectures will help developers design a common architecture, integrate management strategies and write an application software module capable of running on both architectures.
“Establishing a cooperation framework with OpenFog represents a significant step towards adoption of our standards by the industry,” said Alex Reznik, chairman of ETSI MEC ISG, in a statement. “This alignment of a leading industry consortium and a leading standards setting organization in the fog/edge space should make it easier for both application developers and infrastructure solution providers to develop towards a common, open and interoperable edge computing environment.”