I recently hosted an interesting webinar with Torsten Volk (Principal Analyst of Application Modernization, Enterprise Strategy Group) and David Brown (ISG NA Technical Strategist, Lenovo), and I am eager to share some of the highlights from this event. If you are planning to manage compute and data beyond the four walls of a traditional data center—such as with retail stores, manufacturing plants, hospitals, or gas stations—this blog post provides insights we covered in the webinar on why edge infrastructure is critical.
The Edge: Compute Wherever You Need It
Let’s talk about what “the edge” means. David described it simply as any place your infrastructure runs outside of the main data center. And when you stop to think about it, that could be anywhere: the clinic down the street, a remote oil rig in the Gulf, or even the new smart coffee machine in your office kitchen. Why push compute and storage out there? Because local processing cuts latency, enabling your AI models, real-time analytics, and IoT devices to make decisions instantly—exactly when and where you need them.
Distributing servers and sensors to hundreds (or thousands) of locations brings massive complexity. You’ve got different teams spinning up solutions, patching machines, and installing software—often without informing central IT. This can lead to hidden security risks, skyrocketing costs, and a complex setup of siloed tools no one can manage from a single place.
Why Central IT Can’t Ignore the Edge
XClarity, a suite of software designed to manage infrastructure, highlights Lenovo’s “secret sauce.” It starts with a holistic systems management methodology that supports everything from rugged edge appliances to AI-optimized servers. XClarity utilizes Redfish and offers open APIs for easy integration with automation tools (such as Ansible or Terraform). Let’s say you want to deploy an OS update: you define it once in your playbook, and XClarity handles zero-touch provisioning, retries automatically if a site loses connectivity mid-update, and reports back on success or failure.
We also delved into Lenovo’s Open Cloud Automation—LOC-A for short. Imagine a no-code platform that orchestrates the entire lifecycle—including onboarding bare-metal servers, configuring clusters, and pushing out the right firmware and OS images—all without a field technician ever setting foot on site. The time and resource savings are enormous, and local teams can stay focused on their core business rather than wrestling with IT drudgery.
But it doesn’t stop there. In the webinar, I also covered the notion of DevEdgeOps, applying DevOps principles to this wildly heterogeneous fleet of edge devices. DevOps CI / CD pipelines can build your confidence in cloud deployments while seeking to extend similar reliability to every kiosk, rackmount node, and smart sensor you’ve got in the field. Consistent blueprints, centralized monitoring, and policy-driven automation mean you can push updates and trust they’ll land correctly, no matter how unreliable the local network might be.
Torsten commented that the common challenge is “the complexity of modern infrastructure (spreading across data centers, clouds, edge locations, and more) needs to support a consistent application experience. We need data locality to have low latency, which means we have certain data at the edge that requires data-driven decision-making based on that data. Simultaneously, processing needs are increasingly shifting to the edge along with compute.”
AI plays a role as well. XClarity Administrator isn’t just a dashboard; it embeds machine learning (ML) to surface actionable insights. For example, predictive maintenance alerts before a server fails, or automated remediation suggestions when anomalies appear in your telemetry. And the CNXN Helix Center for Applied AI and Robotics is working on next-gen AI tools, so you get a continuously improving platform that learns from every edge deployment.
Tailoring Edge Solutions for Your Vertical Needs
Each business vertical has specific needs. For example, retail chains need instantaneous inventory updates. Manufacturers rely on IoT-driven quality inspection. Healthcare clinics process images locally for faster diagnoses. Connection and Lenovo are teaming up with ecosystem partners such as Intel—which offers its Tiber Edge—and cellular failover providers to deliver full-stack solutions tailored to specific industry needs.
If you’re interested in learning more about managing the edge and how to eliminate the patchwork of one-off scripts, nail down a unified control plane, or bring AI-driven automation to every edge node, watch the full webinar. You’ll hear war stories from largescale edge rollouts and learn which emerging tools will simplify your work.
Take a deeper dive into this topic:
- Watch the on-demand webinar Edge Compute Management: Transforming IT Operations for Distributed Platforms at Scale
- Read our recent article Streamlining the Edge: Infrastructure Management at Scale
- Download the infographic Edge Infrastructure Unlocks Innovation
- Read the eBook Unlocking Edge Innovation at Scale
