Competition among companies to expand AI to edge devices that interact with consumers and users is intensifying. Amidst this, Intel has unveiled a new open software platform that facilitates the development, deployment, and execution of edge AI solutions for developers, operators, and enterprises.

Intel announced its new 'Edge Platform' at MWC24 on the 27th, a modular, open software platform that helps enterprise customers develop, deploy, run, secure, and manage edge and AI applications at scale with cloud-like ease.

In this announcement, Intel emphasized its commitment to monetizing its investments in 5G, edge, and enterprise infrastructure. Intel emphasized its success at the edge, having spent over a decade transforming current network infrastructure into a software-defined platform and driven by over 90,000 real-world deployments.

Because the edge is where data is generated, the amount of computing at the edge is growing rapidly. Many edge computing deployments are incorporating AI, and enterprises are seeing a need to automate the edge for a variety of reasons, including securing price competitiveness, alleviating labor shortages, expanding innovation, increasing efficiency, improving time-to-market, and delivering new services.

Some of the challenges facing edge operations include: 1) Difficulty in building high-performance edge AI solutions with high return on investment (ROI) across diverse use cases in specific industries; 2) Diversity in hardware, software, and power requirements at the edge; 3) Lack of secure and cost-effective ways to move and utilize the large amounts of data required for AI at the edge while maintaining low latency; and 4) Operational management of increasingly complex, massively distributed edge devices and applications.

△Short latency, on-site availability, and cost-effectiveness are essential to meet the stringent requirements of diverse use cases, including industrial facility defect detection and preventive maintenance, seamless checkout and inventory management in retail stores, and smart city, transportation, and traffic management and emergency safety management.

This requires advanced networking and AI analytics at the edge, typically blending on-premises analytics with some AI processing in the cloud to manage global deployment locations. These hybrid AI scenarios require software platforms built to handle them.

“The edge is the next frontier for digital transformation, which is further accelerated by AI,” said Pallavi Mahajan, Intel vice president and general manager of software for the Network and Edge Group. “Intel has spent years integrating software initiatives and building a customer base in the market to deliver the next phase of a complete edge-native platform required to enable the infrastructure, applications and efficient AI deployments at scale.”

He also said, “Intel’s modular platform helps enterprises implement optimal edge infrastructure performance and simplify application management, thereby improving corporate competitiveness and TCO.”

Intel's Edge Platform customers include AWS, Lenovo, L&T Technology Services, Red Hat, SAP, Vericast, Verizon Business, and Wipro, and will be launched to market with the support of industry leaders and a broad ecosystem.

The platform reportedly offers infrastructure management and AI application development capabilities that can be integrated into existing software stacks through open standards.