- Cisco wants to make edge deployments easier for non-experts
- Unified Edge includes hardware, software and security with modular scale up and across capabilities
- It is targeting retail, manufacturing and healthcare, but telco could also be in the mix
If you’re from the U.S., you might remember an old car insurance commercial that had the slogan “So easy a caveman could do it.” It just so happens that phrase perfectly encapsulates the idea behind Cisco’s new Unified Edge product.
“As an industry we’ve neglected to make it easy for customers to deploy and operate at the edge,” SVP and GM for Cisco Compute Jeremy Foster told Fierce.
Foster, who used to work in data centers before joining Cisco over a decade ago said he was shocked to see that edge deployments today still have the same messy, cobbled-together look they had 15 years ago. That’s a problem given Gartner has predicted that 50% of enterprises will be using edge computing by 2029, up from 20% in 2024.
“We’ve got to change that to be able to enable these new things that folks want to do,” he said, referencing new use cases and AI applications. “That means taking switches, routers, multiple management planes and multiple products from multiple different folks and putting it all together [in a way that requires] limited technical expertise at the edge.”
Easy does it
Enter Cisco Unified Edge, a product that is so conceptually simple that it’s frankly a wonder it hasn’t been done before.
Unified Edge comprises hardware in the form of a 3RU tall chassis with room for six interchangeable compute, storage and networking modules that can be swapped in and out to scale up or down as needed. This setup is key, Foster said. “It’s not a one-and-done, it’s an entire system” with a long roadmap,” he said.
The messy cabling outside the box has magically disappeared and the unit has been fool-proofed with fans placed at both the top and the side to prevent it from overheating even if placed incorrectly – such as directly up against a wall.
For now, the focus is on general purpose compute, but Foster said Cisco is working with Nvidia and others on a roadmap for GPU modules.
“We’re trying to solve today’s edge problem,” he explained. “That’s a multi-billion market outside of or prior to the advent of AI…In a lot of cases, this isn’t just about running a GPU.”
Foster isn’t exaggerating here. Gartner predicted late last year that the edge computing market would nearly quadruple in size between 2023 and 2033, growing from $131 billion to around $511 billion. The rise of AI, and inferencing workloads in particular, is only expected to accelerate that growth.
But Unified Edge isn’t just a box. The package also includes an upgraded version of Cisco’s Intersight multi-site management software for the scale-across component. This, too, has been streamlined for ease of use with pre-loaded click-to-deploy configuration blueprints that can help ensure consistency and security and avoid configuration drift as a customer’s edge footprint grows.
For security, there’s a locking bezel on the front of the box to prevent unauthorized people from tampering with the gear or otherwise trying to turn it off. And Cisco provides AI defense capabilities which can help customers see whether the models they’re trying to run on Unified Edge gear are legit or infected with malicious code.
In terms of Cisco’s target audience here, Foster said it build the Unified Edge with retail, manufacturing, financial services and healthcare in mind. Interestingly, though, it seems telco could also be in the mix, with Verizon making an appearance in the product press release.