The Linux Foundation today launched an edge computing initiative, called LF Edge, that will serve as an umbrella organization for the foundation’s three existing edge projects plus two new projects contributed by Samsung and Zededa.

The new group’s list of founding members reads like a who’s who of chipmakers (Arm, Intel, and Qualcomm), telecommunications companies, (AT&T, NTT, and Ericsson), cloud providers (Baidu and Tencent), and edge infrastructure vendors (Packet, Dell EMC, HPE, and IBM), to name a few.

In total, there are more than 60. “It’s a very good cross section of leaders that are coming together to create this LF Edge community,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager of networking at the Linux Foundation. “This initiative is all about is bringing openness to the edge that cuts across IoT, cloud, telecom, and enterprise markets.

The new organization aims to develop an open, interoperable framework for edge computing that is independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system. Its initial five projects will support edge applications in non-traditional video (such as 36-degree video) and connected things other than phones like drones and autonomous cars. All of these emerging applications require lower latency, faster processing, and mobility.

LF Edge includes Akraino Edge Stack, EdgeX Foundry, and the Open Glossary of Edge Computing, formerly stand-alone projects at the Linux Foundation. Akraino Edge Stack is creating an open source software stack that supports high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications. EdgeX Foundry focuses on building a common open framework for IoT edge computing. And the Open Glossary of Edge Computing provides a concise collection of terms related to the field of edge computing.

It also includes two new projects. Home Edge Project, seed code contributed by Samsung Electronics, aims to enable a robust, reliable, and intelligent home edge computing framework, platform, and ecosystem running on a variety of devices. And Project EVE (Edge Virtualization Engine), contributed by Zededa, is developing an open and agnostic standard edge architecture that accommodates on- and off-premises hardware, network, and application selections.

Project EVE will enable a unified approach to developing and orchestrating cloud-native applications across the enterprise on-premises edge, Joshipura explained. EVE provides direct access to and control of underlying resources as well as standard APIs that allow a more efficient use of resources and can partition hardware to increase workload consolidation and application multi-lenancy.

“It gives you that layer of virtualization engine that is agnostic of the hardware and the connectivity on the southbound, but also gives you that API to connect into the container layers with built-in security that focuses on access and is specific to the edge,” Joshipura said. “It provides multiple layers of security because the perimeter is gone.” This code will come into the project sometime next month, he added.

The other projects within LF Edge are moving forward as well. “April is the initial code drop for multiple of these projects,” Joshipura said. This includes EdgeX Foundary’s fourth release, and Akraino Edge Stack’s April release of 19 blueprints that address different edge use cases including IoT, telecom access, network cloud, and industrial automation. “TSC [technical steering committee] has approved these 19 blueprints already — they are end-to-end reference solutions,” Joshipura said.

And, he added, LF Edge wants to work with the myriad other groups working on edge standards and related efforts — and there are a lot of them. This includes groups like ETSI, MEF, Open Edge Computing, Edge Computing Consortium, OpenFog, and the Industrial Internet Consortium, among others.

“We are always looking at partnerships with other bodies and consortiums that are developing standards to ensure the code that is developed can be easily adopted and pushed into the market,” Joshipura said.