Intelligent Cloud-to-Edge Solution with Google Cloud

Data gravity and privacy concerns require federated solutions across public clouds and multiple edge locations. For example, retail stores embed cameras and sensors to track customer purchases, monitor inventory and provide real-time recommendations, but face challenges as forwarding massive volumes of video and sensor data to the cloud for processing is not practical and adds significant latency.

Edge solutions allow users to ingest, analyze and quickly act on large volumes of data. However, up until now they required significant development efforts and did not take full advantage of the vast resources running in the cloud. Iguazio’s Intelligent Cloud-to-Edge solution with Google Cloud addresses the challenges of various industries including leading retail software providers like Trax which required one solution federated across the cloud and thousands of retail stores.
The Intelligent Cloud-to-Edge solution is the first solution which seamlessly extends the cloud experience to the edge:

• Develop and test software in the cloud and automatically deploy at the edge
• Manage, control and monitor multiple edge systems from the cloud
• Run real-time analytics and AI at the edge powered by machine learning in the cloud
• Automatically move data to/from the cloud and the edge
• Focus on building applications without managing infrastructure or middleware

The solution leverages Kubernetes and microservices, making it possible to seamlessly migrate workloads and functions from the cloud to the edge and conduct live software upgrades. It includes unique managed services provided by Google and Iguazio as described below to deliver a comprehensive solution.

The solution consists of multiple intelligent edge devices centrally controlled by Google Cloud. Each edge cluster incorporates Iguazio’s Intelligent Edge software which includes the following components:

• A unified real-time database, with simultaneous access to time series, SQL, NoSQL, streaming and file APIs
• Remotely managed Kubernetes with GPU support and platform resource management
• Remotely deployed containers and serverless functions (based on Iguazio’s framework Nuclio)
• Edge life-cycle functions (for remote software upgrades, monitoring, remote control and automated data movement)

The Google IoT Core service is the control plane, communicating with all devices through the lightweight and secure MQTT protocol. Microservices and functions are developed and tested in the cloud and once verified, are placed in Google Container Registry and pushed to edge clusters.

Data and machine leaning models are transferred automatically to the edge based on user requests, system triggers or predefined schedules, while data collected, aggregated or analyzed at the edge is uploaded to various Google Cloud data services for further processing and re-enforced machine learning.

Iguazio’s software is also available as a managed service on Google Cloud, running real-time analytics and AI on data
uploaded from multiple edge locations. It leverages Iguazio’s high-performance time-series analysis service and real-time serverless functions (Nuclio) to handle and act upon large amounts of IoT sensor data. The solution powers customers in various fields to take advantage of a modern and self-service architecture for intelligent and federated cloud-to-edge solutions and overcome operational challenges. Some examples include: manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, smart cities & buildings, retail, financial, oil & gas, telcos, cybersecurity. For more information, live demos or trials contact: info@www.iguazio.com