OpenFog and ETSI team up for fog/edge apps standards

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ETSI and the OpenFog Consortium have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate to develop fog-enabled mobile edge applications and technologies.

The two organizations say the MoU will benefit organizations working to develop 5G, mission-critical and data-dense applications through fog computing and networking, reducing technical overlap across domains.

OpenFog will cooperate with the ETSI Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) Industry Specification Group (ISG) on ICT standardization and interoperability requirements by sharing and applying selected technical work in process.

MEC’s work addresses multiple multi-access edge hosts deployed by different operator-owned networks which run edge applications in a collaborative manner. The OpenFog Reference Architecture will extend the mobile edge with a physical and logical multi-layered network hierarchy of cooperating fog nodes that interface between cloud and edge, allowing for interoperability across operators.

One of the first initiatives from the agreement will be focused on APIs which support edge computing interoperability. The recently released package of MEC APIs contain properties that can be adapted and used in the OpenFog reference architecture.

The ETSI MEC specifications also include API framework which provides a framework for delivering services to be consumed or offered by locally hosted or remote authorized applications. By adopting and re-using APIs across the OpenFog and MEC architectures, it will be easier for developers to create common architectures, unify management strategies, and write a single application software modules that run on both OpenFog and MEC architectures.

“This OpenFog-ETSI MoU is a significant step in our efforts to build interoperability for efficient and reliable networks and intelligent endpoints operating along the Cloud-to-Things continuum,” said Helder Antunes, chairman of the OpenFog Consortium and senior director at Cisco. “We’re now positioned to leverage our respective work to give the industry a cohesive set of standards around fog computing in mobile environments, while eliminating any redundancy in our respective efforts.”

The OpenFog Consortium was formed to accelerate the deployment of fog computing technologies through the development of an open architecture that identifies core technologies and capabilities such as distributed computing, networking and storage that will support intelligence at the edge of IoT. The consortium was formed by ARM, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, and Princeton University in November 2015, and has members in North America, Europe and Asia.

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