Leaders from Data Centre and Telco sectors met at RISE SICS in Lulea – Europe’s leading datacentre research facility housing test implementations of Edge and 5G.

While most Infrastructure Masons EdgeMasons meetings to date have been attended predominantly by participants from the “Data Center” sector, we also invited leaders from the Telco industry to this event. Since both sectors have a major role to play in the deployment of Edge capabilities, we wanted to facilitate understanding and alignment between these two groups in terms of their view and plans for Edge – particularly with 5G in mind.

The workshop was led by Tor Björn Minde, Head of Lab at RISE SICS North and Research Strategy Ericsson & Simon Allen iMasons Executive Director – The group was split into 4 groups – care was taken to ensure a good mix of “Data Centre” and “Telco”.

Each group was asked to pick 3-4 questions from the options below and brainstorm answers – the discussions were lively with surprising alternative views from representatives from the different sectors.

• What applications will live on the edge?
  • Types, use cases, requirements on hardware
• How will the edge nodes look like?
  • Types, sizes, power needs, buildings, cooling, IT HW
• What type of software is needed?
  • Cloud, management, orchestration, operations
• How will the edge roll-out look like?
  • Starting point, in base stations, in colos, sizes first
• How can we make edge support sustainability?
  • Heat re-use, renewables, energy storage
• How will the business models & relations look like?
  • Roles? Mobile Operators, Service Providers, tower operators, new players?

Lulea is a special place at this time of the year – with daylight almost 24 hours a day. In the evening the delegates went on a boat trip. The photo below was taken around midnight.

The ouputs from the workshop are being processed by iMasons and RISE SICS and a forthcoming blog will be available. Stay tuned.