Lenovo used the occasion of the recent MWC Barcelona event to unveil an edge server that is just slightly larger than a ThinkPad.
The ThinkSystem SE350 is a purpose-built server which will come to market this summer and is half the width and significantly shorter than a traditional server, making it ideal for deployment in tight spaces.
It can be mounted on a wall, stacked on a shelf or mounted in a rack. The ThinkSystem SE350 puts increased processing power, storage and network closer to where data is generated, allowing actions resulting from the analysis of that data to take place more quickly.
Since these edge servers are typically deployed outside of secure data centres, they include technology that encrypts the data stored on the device if it is tampered with, only enabling authorised users to access it. In addition, the server will support both Wi-Fi and LTE connectivity.
“There is tremendous opportunity to help customers realize the power that edge computing can bring to their organisations,” said Kirk Skaugen, Executive Vice President, Lenovo and president of Lenovo Data Center Group.
“We’ve made significant focused investments in our IoT and Telco offerings over the past year with several strategic partners, enabling connectivity from edge to data centre. We are committed to supporting industry open source initiatives, including the Open RAN, and Lenovo looks forward to co-chairing the Open RAN (O-RAN) Cloudification and Orchestration groups,” he added.
Lenovo has teamed up with Pivot3 to drive smart city capabilities.
As governments and organisations adopt the next generation of edge computing to help protect people, increase efficiency and avoid loss, Lenovo and Pivot3 are working together to support mission-critical smart city and safe campus deployments across multiple sectors.
In collaboration with SecureTech, a leading integrator of video security solutions, Lenovo and Pivot3 helped a leading Middle East hospitality customer secure their sprawling hotel complex meeting their mission critical requirements for resilience, security and manageability.
Together, they delivered a successful security solution, efficiently capturing and managing their security video data. The project reduces risk of data loss, system failure and lowers cost of acquisition and ownership, while reducing their need for advanced technical skills.
Lenovo has also revealed its future-ready retail store Infrastructure solution in partnership with Scale Computing, enabling retail customers to deploy mini data centres that offer enterprise-class IT infrastructure at the edge of their networks.
Delhaize, an international food retail group headquartered in Zaandam, Netherlands, operates supermarkets and e-commerce businesses across 6,700+ stores in 11 countries, serving over 50 million customers each week.
Delhaize wanted to reduce time spent deploying and managing edge IT infrastructure and needed a solution that could host traditional and IoT applications on the same hardware. With the combined solution, the business found the stability, support, cost savings, simplicity and optimised security needed to modernise its stores with IoT for optimising freezing, heating and the customer experience.
