Amid the rush of operator interest in how edge computing intersects with 5G, it is ironic that ETSI – whose MEC project laid the foundation for MNO-focused edge platforms – has been somewhat overshadowed. But the standards body remains active and influential, and last week announced its 100th MEC member and a new initiative to extend its developer ecosystem.
MEC – now called Multi-access Edge Computing – once presented itself as the key framework for the entire edge, but since then, the remit has got far larger, and for many enterprise use cases, telco locations such as central offices are not sufficient alone. Broader platforms like OpenFog/IEEE have taken the lead, and there was a prospect that MEC would be sidelined as a set of telco-specific application programming interfaces (APIs) within the bigger frameworks.
But while telcos may not have the edge all to themselves, and will have to work closely with enterprise providers, cloud giants and other players in a complex chain, ETSI has enhanced the role of its platforms within that broader landscape in the past year and its latest step is to achieve the all-important process of building a strong developer base.
Having announced its 100th MEC member – Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe – it announced a sandbox program for developers. This will be publicly accessible and ETSI-hosted, providing an online edge emulation environment where application programmers can experiment with the MEC service APIs.
They can use those standardized edge service APIs in emulated city and indoor network environments, to understand and model the interactions between MEC services, edge applications, the end devices and multiple access networks, including LTE/5G and WiFi. The first release will be available online later this year.