By ; Amir Taha

Edge computing is transforming the way businesses operate, innovate and compete in today's digital world. By locating computation and data processing closer to where data is generated, it is possible to make decisions faster and leverage AI applications at the edge.

AI inferencing at the edge can drive better outcomes faster by enabling real-time insights, actions and automation.

However, the task of managing edge operations across diverse locations, devices and applications can be daunting and expensive. Now, there's a solution to these complexities: Dell NativeEdge, an innovative edge operations software platform designed to simplify, optimize and secure your entire edge estate.

NativeEdge streamlines edge operations at scale through centralized management, secure device onboarding, zero-touch deployment and automated management of infrastructure and applications.

It lays the foundation for efficient and consistent operations spanning from the edge to the multicloud environment.

NativeEdge enables businesses to unlock the full power of their data with faster, easier and less costly operations.

Moreover, NativeEdge deploys, secures and manages end-to-end AI-based solutions empowering businesses to harness the potential of AI at the edge and deliver value faster.

Today marks an exciting milestone as we unveil NativeEdge 2.0, which offers new features and capabilities including:

Blueprints that simplify and accelerate the orchestration of key ISV and AI applications with preconfigured settings.

Application orchestration across hybrid environments extending the benefits of NativeEdge’s application deployment and lifecycle management from NativeEdge Endpoints to your entire infrastructure.

Expanded edge environment support for greater flexibility of your edge deployments.

Enhanced security capabilities for robust protection and easy compliance of your edge data and applications.

New subscription options for predictable budgeting.

NativeEdge Blueprints: A Comprehensive Automation Tool for Edge Solutions

Imagine a retailer who wants to introduce an interactive generative AI (GenAI) tool that will enhance customers’ shopping experience by guiding them to the perfect products in the store. This rollout is set to reach thousands of devices across hundreds of stores nationwide. To bring this vision to life, the retailer must enlist the expertise of a partner, a system integrator or internal IT specialists. These technical experts are tasked with uploading the GenAI application to a central hub before embarking on a store-by-store journey.

At each location, they must identify suitable edge devices, prepare them for the new deployment, install the application and then conduct thorough tests to ensure everything operates smoothly.

The retailer must replicate this meticulous and resource-intensive process across every store in the chain, demanding significant time and financial investment.

Now, imagine if you could do all these steps with the click of a button, across all the devices in different sites, while sitting in a central IT location.

That’s the efficiency Blueprint unleashes for application orchestration with NativeEdge.

Blueprints are a comprehensive, declarative automation plan that include the complete configuration required for deploying an edge solution and automating application deployment across the entire edge estate.

Blueprints automate the entire process of provisioning, configuring, deploying and validating your edge solution to save time, effort and resources, while also ensuring consistency and compliance across the edge environment.

With Blueprints, you can define the application settings, infrastructure resources, network configurations, custom workflows and scripts required for your edge solution in a single file. Using a single command, developers or IT operators can then deploy the application leveraging the Blueprint across many edge devices, as well as across various development stages, from testing to production, by simply providing the relevant configuration details. 

Moreover, Blueprints streamline day two operations, incorporating all post-deployment tasks, such as configuration updates and service alterations within the solution stack, and offering a significantly smoother and more streamlined DevOps experience at the edge.

Figure 1: Dell NativeEdge application deployment automation with Blueprints

Validated by Dell: New NativeEdge Blueprints for AI-enabled Industry Applications

To help you get started, we’re introducing Blueprints for the most common and critical edge applications in manufacturing and retail. Blueprints for Telit, Litmus and PTC for manufacturing, Deep North for retail, Dell Streaming Data Platform for analytics and Rancher Labs K3s for Kubernetes are designed using our extensive expertise in delivering edge solutions across industries and various uses cases. The pre-validated Blueprints improve the performance, reliability and security of your edge applications while accelerating your time to value.

NativeEdge Application Orchestration: Now Across Hybrid Environments

With NativeEdge 2.0, we’re introducing seamless application orchestration across hybrid environments. With this feature, you can use Blueprint to deploy and manage your edge applications not only on NativeEdge Endpoints (specialized Dell edge devices optimized for NativeEdge operation), but also on other Dell and non-Dell infrastructure to multicloud through vSphere virtualization and Kubernetes clusters. This feature gives you more flexibility and choice in selecting the best infrastructure for your edge applications and enables you to orchestrate them seamlessly with NativeEdge.

Figure 2: Application Orchestration in hybrid environments with Dell NativeEdge

Expanded Edge Environment Support

In NativeEdge 2.0, we’re broadening edge environment support by introducing Windows 11 VMs for NativeEdge Endpoints. This enhancement enables the seamless execution of cutting-edge Windows-based applications on NativeEdge Endpoints, leveraging the advanced functionalities and advantages offered by NativeEdge 2.0.

Enhanced Security with Zero Trust Enabling Technologies

We’re enabling you to enhance your edge environment security and compliance with NativeEdge 2.0. We’re introducing support for vTPM (virtual Trusted Platform Module) and UEFI Secure Boot capabilities. vTPM is a virtualized version of TPM, a hardware-based security feature that provides cryptographic functions and secure storage for encryption keys, certificates and passwords. vTPM allows you to use TPM functionalities for your VMs running on NativeEdge Endpoints, such as encrypting your VM disks, verifying your VM integrity and attesting your VM identity. UEFI Secure Boot is a feature that ensures only authorized and trusted software can boot on your NativeEdge Endpoints, preventing unauthorized or malicious software from compromising your edge devices. These advancements align with the Zero Trust principles of NativeEdge, bolstering your edge security and peace of mind.

Three-Year Subscription Plans for NativeEdge

Finally, we’re introducing three-year subscription plans for NativeEdge, offering more choices to meet your needs depending on your edge requirements and preferences. With the three-year subscription plans, you can enjoy longer-term savings and benefits, such as lower costs and predictable budgeting.

Dell NativeEdge 2.0 is a comprehensive, automated, secure, multicloud edge operations software platform that helps organizations centrally manage and securely scale their edge across multiple locations. With new features and improvements like Blueprints for application orchestration, expanded edge environment support and enhanced security capabilities, Dell NativeEdge 2.0 is a powerful tool for organizations looking to securely scale their edge environments, optimize their edge investments and improve efficiency. 

Learn more, and contact your Dell account executive to try out Dell NativeEdge 2.0 today.