Qualcomm has joined the growing number of companies that are delivering edge computing services.
The company’s Qualcomm Technologies subsidiary has announced its new Wireless Edge Services offering. The suite of software services is aimed at helping both enterprise and industrial IoT customers to provision, connect, and manage intelligent wireless devices securely through their cloud platforms.
The company said that the software, “is expected to be exposed through new APIs” and is available on select Qualcomm chipsets – initially the MDM9206 LTE modem for industrial IoT products, MDM9628 LTE modem for automotive products, and QCA4020 for home IoT products. The company will then make the service available on some Snapdragon platforms.
Qualcomm explained that the services are designed to assist in the provisioning and management of huge numbers of connected 4G and 5G devices.
They are also engineered to support what it called a ‘chipsets-as-a-service’ model (CaaS), in which the value of certain chipset capabilities can be realised through discrete services. In addition, the US company claimed that the new offerings would offer protection against compromised devices and network attacks.
“With the introduction of Qualcomm Wireless Edge Services, we continue to evolve and augment our leading Snapdragon portfolio to better serve our expanding base of customers across many industries. And to unlock the potential associated with trusted wireless access to billions of increasingly capable edge devices,” said Serge Willenegger, senior VP and general manager, 4G/5G and industrial IoT, Qualcomm Wireless GmbH.
“We are excited by the initial response from cloud, enterprise and industrial companies and are looking forward to working with them, as well as with our traditional customers to accelerate the transformative opportunity supported by advanced security, intelligence, and wireless connectivity capability at the edge,” he added.
The edge environment is getting busier, smarter, and faster as the IoT spreads, and the need for high-speed, low-cost services ramps up. Faster connectivity will be essential, as will the ability to roll out services from interconnected devices swiftly.