CRN Exclusive: Scale Computing Leads The Edge Charge With First Hyper-Converged System Built For Edge Computing

Scale Computing is doubling down on its investments around the edge with the launch of the industry's first hyper-converged system that is purpose-built for edge computing environments.

Jeff Ready, CEO of Scale Computing, said that the company's new offering, HC3 Edge, gives customers the benefits of the company's HC3 on-premises appliance-based hyper-converged infrastructure on small form factors that meet edge requirements.

"We are seeing strong demand from our customers for HCI [Hyper-Converged] at the edge, especially among our large retail, manufacturing, and healthcare verticals where a combination of factors, including IoT adoption, are increasing on-prem demands," said Ready, CEO of Scale Computing. "Customers need flexibility both now and in the future. What we are providing at Scale is a single platform spanning on-premises, cloud, and edge computing that will serve our customers well in the decade to come."

[Related: CRN Exclusive: Rigado'sIoT Connectivity Suite Arms Channel With Key Building Blocks, Bluetooth 5 Capabilities]

HC3 Edge is a turnkey platform for running virtualized applications without the need for VMware in IoT or distributed environments.

The platform uses Scale's Hypercore OS platform so that partners can deliver HCI across multiple hardware platforms, from lightweight IoT devices to larger, micro data centers.

For instance, Hypercore OS can be deployed on very small form factors, like Intel NUCs, Raspberry Pis, or Supermicro Embedded systems.

"We want to turn those devices into the computing infrastructure especially as IoT becomes more popular," said Ready. "Rather than those little devices sending data back to a data center rack, we can enable them to be fully functional devices themselves."

Bill Barnier, sales manager at Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based value-added partner Data Partner Inc. said the new HC3 gives him another competitive weapon in the Scale midmarket arsenal.

Barnier said that he is seeing interest in edge computing from the retail vertical that may have a number of IoT devices running – such as video surveillance cameras, time clock systems or point-of-sale devices. Having a small form factor with edge computing capabilities allows data from those devices to be processed and stored at the edge, said Barnier.

"One advantage [of HC3] is being flexible enough to run it on a smaller appliance at the edge, where you might have a point-of-sale or an environment with multiple locations and want some sort of compute and local storage running," he said.

"HC3 Edge enables clients to push compute out to the edge with the flexibility of using small appliances so that if connectivity is not available, they can still run as a company. We have clients saying that they need compute at the edge that can't be expensive. They want something that can run on a NUC or a tower."

Improved NVMe storage, mobile computing, and the decreasing cost of computer components are all trends that indicate that data is moving from centralized, cloud-based systems to decentralized edge systems, said Ready.

Ready stressed that the HC3 platforms would help customers tap into the opportunities on the edge – but also continue using cloud computing for situations where that is necessary.

"The result [of HC3] is a fully functional, scalable, and highly available virtualization environment on even the smallest of hardware devices, with no need for additional software licensing," he said.