Derek Collison is the Founder & CEO of Synadia. Synadia invented the open source connective technology, NATS.io. With NATS you possibly can easily connect all of your applications and data at a world scale, irrespective of what language they’re written in or where they’re running.
Derek Collison is a 30 yr industry veteran, entrepreneur, and pioneer in secure and large-scale distributed systems and cloud computing. He helped change the best way financial, transportation, and logistics systems fundamentally worked while spending over a decade at TIBCO, designing systems that also power much of those industries today. At Google, Derek co-founded the AJAX APIs group and created the most important CDN for popular javascript libraries, identifying the necessity for simple and secure access to Google’s services without the necessity for added servers.
How can AI and edge computing work together to realize low-latency, complex data processing?
Edge computing has two primary roles to play within the AI economy. The first role today is in the gathering and distribution of edge based data / telemetry to be used in supporting the centralized training of models.
The emerging and far larger opportunity is for AI inferencing use cases. AI and edge computing are a critical and powerful combination that allows real-time processing, reduced latency, improved accuracy, and enhanced privacy & security.
We are actually seeing clear signs that inference at the sting shouldn’t be simply getting large quantized models to run at the sting. It’s evolving to a multi-stage pipeline, one where prompt augmentation and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) operations transform the initial prompt from a user or system using real time and site independent access to data at the sting. The second is a graph traversal of multiple models vs. a single model whether or not they are local or distant.
What are some real-world applications where the mix of AI and edge computing has made a big impact?
AI is impacting every industry at an increasing velocity. We’re seeing the open-source NATS community and ecosystem constructing applications and services in industrial manufacturing and IoT (predictive maintenance, process optimization & digital twins), autonomous vehicles (optimized routes & safety), green energy (energy optimization), retail (personalized shopping experiences and real-time inventory management), FinTech (regulatory compliance and algorithmic trading) and government (DoD/IC communities e.g. drone CUAS).
Certainly one of our customers is a manufacturer of medical devices which can be used as a training platform at facilities all around the globe. Each local event must be captured and stored as a part of a certification process. Having to trombone all traffic back to the central cloud was each cost prohibitive and difficult for the more distant sessions. Our native edge capabilities allowed them to simplify their platform delivery capabilities.
Because the creators of NATS.io, how do you see open-source technology shaping the longer term of edge computing?
Edge computing has proven itself to be a special landscape than cloud computing. The approaches and solutions utilized in the present so-called “cloud native” architectures aren’t translating to the sting.
The “what” component of the answer stays familiar, however the “how” may be very different. Synadia/NATS.io changes the “how,” not the “what,” to unravel challenges with micro-services and data access and flow at the sting across any cloud or geography.
What are the important thing advantages of using NATS.io for global connectivity of applications and data?
The principal benefits of NATS.io come from its unique approach to connectivity and integrated data layer. NATS’ intelligent connectivity enables applications and services to be built with location transparency or what we wish to call “nomadic applications.” NATS removes the necessities of additional cloud infrastructure similar to load balancers, service mesh, or API gateways to permit users to put in writing an application once and deploy it anywhere.
Constructing upon that’s our data layer, with streams and key-value and object stores. It’s the mix of our data layer with the connectivity layer that provides powerful access and flow patterns which can be suited thoroughly to the sting for latency sensitive and real time applications.
What are the subsequent big innovations in edge and connectivity that you simply foresee in the approaching years?
Real-time fleet management, telemetry data collection, evaluation at the sting and naturally AI inference at the sting in real time with specific temporal envelopes will all be priority innovations. Examples of this include:
- Increased AI capabilities at the sting: As processing power improves, more advanced AI and machine learning capabilities will move from the cloud to edge devices.
- 5G and edge computing convergence: The continued rollout of 5G networks will transform edge computing capabilities by providing ultra-low latency and high bandwidth.
- Edge-to-cloud continuum: We’ll likely see a more seamless integration between edge and cloud computing, making a continuum where data and workloads are dynamically deployed based on requirements. We just like the term “truly nomadic applications.”
- Hyperlocal data centers: There shall be a proliferation of small, hyperlocal data centers to support edge computing needs. Firms like Akamai are already repurposing infrastructure to create a world network of edge data centers.
- Industry-specific edge solutions: We’ll see more tailored edge computing solutions for specific industries like healthcare, manufacturing, retail and agriculture addressing unique challenges and opportunities in each sector.
How is Synadia positioning itself to guide in these future trends?
Our approach is first to tackle network connectivity, then data and we recently introduced the power to handle workloads natively with the NATS Execution Engine (NEX). This differing approach from others caused us to be very misunderstood early on. Nonetheless, this approach has allowed us to bring some modern and really powerful solutions to market challenges around system design and edge.
As applications transition to microservices and move to the sting, we’d like to make sure the assorted components can communicate. We flip the conventional time-consuming approach of adding API gateways and repair meshes, and as an alternative leverage Synadia Platform and NATS.io to simplify the tech stack and its communications.
What are the principal challenges in designing and constructing modern distributed systems, and the way does Synadia address these challenges?
Most people design their systems with a concentrate on workloads first, then data, then finally the network needed to place those together. Security is generally layered last.
Synadia’s tech stack, anchored by NATS.io, allows consistent and rapid design of contemporary distributed systems. These can adapt to single cloud deployments, but more importantly remain future-proof and secure when multiple cloud providers, regions and edge locations enter into the image.
Are you able to provide examples of how Synadia’s solutions have helped firms overcome issues with traditional connectivity models?
Synadia’s platform allows system designers to realize rapid success into edge-based deployments and to future proof those systems no matter deployment targets.
In addition they allow a consistent security model and the elimination of a bunch of other moving parts not needed with the Synadia platform, like load balancers, api gateways, GSLBs, firewalls, VPNs, service meshes, etc.
We work with a world auto OEM that desired to modernize its digital infrastructure. The goal was to avoid siloed application projects and deploy a “global data fabric” that every one of its future digital services could plug into. These are the forms of projects that excite us.
How do Synadia’s business offerings, similar to Synadia Cloud and Synadia Platform, enhance the capabilities of NATS.io?
While we’ll proceed to open source features targeted for a NATS developer, Synadia provides value added IP primarily across the enterprise monitoring and administration of NATS.
Synadia Cloud & Platform are “certified” versions of the software which can be supported for mission critical and enterprise deployments. These are packaged offerings that provide a spectrum of offerings from lower cost, multi-regional and multi-cloud SaaS from Synadia Cloud, to on-premise and edge location deployments for Synadia Platform. These two often work together as well.
How essential is community engagement for Synadia, and what initiatives are you taking to foster a robust developer community?
Our technology roadmap is totally driven by our OSS ecosystem and the developers using the software. We’re continuously engaging with the ecosystem, interacting and getting feedback.
We now have made a big investment in resources to assist with the developer experience. This includes documentation, video tutorials and sample code resources.
