Edge Computing represents one of the most transformative trends in the modern IT landscape. Yet even among seasoned IT practitioners, confusion remains about why and how applications running at the edge are critical for business success.

At this year’s SpiceWorld Virtual event, Scale Computing’s co-founder and chief product officer, Scott Loughmiller will be presenting a half-hour session entitled “Edge Computing: Autonomous Application Infrastructure Beyond the Data Center.” Scott will demystify what edge computing is all about, describe the challenges that make edge computing necessary, and explain how the edge is fueling innovation in the modern enterprise. See his short welcome video, below.

If your organization operates in distributed locations such as remote or branch offices, retail stores, manufacturing facilities, or even a fleet of ships, you probably already run applications at all these sites. And the digital demands of today will only make that more necessary. The use cases for edge computing are being driven by the explosion of data generated by IoT devices and sensors, the need to reduce application latency and deal with unreliable connectivity, and the ever-present data security and privacy concerns.

Why the Edge is Now

Gartner estimates 10% of enterprise generated data is currently being created and processed outside the data center or cloud, but forecasts this figure will mushroom to 75% by the year 2025.

As Scott points out, “not all applications can or should run in the cloud.”

To make his case for why edge computing is having its moment in the sun, Scott offers up an example of a quick service restaurant with thousands of locations. In this scenario, he says the CEO has charged the CTO with the Herculean task of introducing app-based payments to all of their stores within a year.

Each of these locations operate like an independent small business without dedicated staff onsite to manage IT systems. Furthermore, as Scott describes it, the internet connection at all the stores is “literally the least reliable part of their infrastructure so they can’t count on the cloud to run their app-based payments.”

To which Scott poses a provocative question: “What kind of technology leader do you want to be? The one that suffers under the demands of the CEO because you’re behind or the one who’s leading the technology decisions and creating real value for your company?”

Edge Use Cases IRL

It’s easy to think of edge computing as another over-hyped technology that’s years away from being fully realized. However, businesses across a wide range of industries have already embraced edge computing and are leveraging it to drive innovative products and services to market.

To reinforce this point, Scott offers up three diverse use cases of edge computing in the retail, transportation, and manufacturing industries:

• Jerry’s Foods (Retail): Jerry’s Foods is a chain of 50 retail, grocery, liquor and hardware store. Everything in the store—point of sale system, inventory management, security cameras, building controls and even digital signage—runs on a small cluster of Scale Computing HC3 infrastructure. Each one of these stores runs like their own business yet can be managed remotely in a centralized fashion. Read the Jerry’s Foods case study.

• Northern Marine (Transportation): Northern Marine operates a diverse fleet of tankers, ferries, and off-shore assets. Each of these vessels rely on a host of critical applications such as crew management, cargo management, accounting, security, and maintenance systems, and even their digital entertainment systems for the ship’s crew. Because internet connectivity is highly intermittent with no on-board IT personnel, Northern Marine has deployed Scale Computing HC3 clusters to run their operations smoothly while at sea. Read the Technology Innovation at Sea white paper.

• Harrison Steel Castings (Manufacturing): Unlike the other use cases that are really just a modernized way of doing things, with Harrison Steel, a manufacturer of highly engineered precision castings, edge computing is enabling them to do things that were simply not possible before. The machines on the factory floor require continuous calibration to produce the quality parts Harrison Steel is known for. Before deploying Scale Computing, they had to physically collect machine data from across the floor to make adjustments on their machines. With Scale Computing clusters now deployed across the factory floor, the company avoided building a costly new network while improving the delivery of their precision parts. Watch the Industry 4.0 webinar with Harrison Steel.

As Scott says in closing, “Customers are innovating and building better products with edge computing. These new paradigms will create a breeding ground of innovation because it’s happening now. Just like we saw with the cloud, now we will see something similar with the edge, This is the future that’s at our fingertips.”

You can watch Scott’s entire presentation on Tuesday, September 28th at 12:15PM EST by registering for SpiceWorld here.

INDIANAPOLIS – JUNE 22, 2021 – Scale Computing, a market leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions, today announced that TrustRadius has recognized Scale Computing HC3 with two 2021 Top Rated Awards. HC3 has won in two categories, Hyperconverged Infrastructure and Server Virtualization. Scale Computing HC3 has also received a TrustRadius Transparent, Responsive, Unbiased, and Ethical (TRUE) 2021 certification.

“Customer success is Scale Computing’s top priority, so we take great pride in receiving recognition based on customer feedback. HC3 combines servers, storage, and virtualization into a single solution to make IT infrastructure easier for organizations of every size in every industry. We engineered our platform to eliminate complexity, lower costs, and free up management time and we are thrilled that our customers have recognized us in TrustRadius,” said Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder, Scale Computing.

The TrustRadius Top Rated awards consist of three key criteria: recency, relevancy and rating. Winners must have 10+ new or updated reviews in the past 12 months, must receive at least 1.5% of the traffic volume in their respective categories, and must have at least 4 stars with a trScore of 7.5 or above. The TrustRadius TRUE Program recognizes vendors who are Transparent, Responsive, Unbiased and Ethical in sourcing and using customer reviews.

This news follows a plethora of recent award wins and industry recognition for the company including:

• Scale Computing recognized as a Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Vendor for Hyperconverged Infrastructure.
• Scale Computing received a 5-Star Rating by CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, in its 2021 Partner Program Guide.
• Scale Computing’s Marlena Fernandez was recognized for the second consecutive year on CRN’s 2021 Women of the Channel List and Channel Power 100 List.
• GigaOm has named Scale Computing both a “leader” and “outperformer” in its most recent report, “GigaOm Radar for Hyperconverged Infrastructure: Small-to-Medium Enterprises and Edge.”
• Scale Computing’s Scott Mann was recognized for the third consecutive year as CRN’s Channel Chief.
• TechTarget’s Storage Magazine & SearchStorage.com selected Scale Computing as a winner for its annual Products of the Year Awards for 2020 for the HE150 in Hyper-converged & Composable Infrastructure.
• TrustRadius recognized Scale Computing with a 2021 Best Feature Set Award, a 2021 Best of Customer Support Award, and a 2021 Best Usability Award. This trifecta of awards highlights the few companies with outstanding feature sets that have gone above and beyond to delight their users. The company ranked first in all three categories.
• The HE150, powered by Scale Computing’s HC3 Edge software platform, is a winner of the CRN 2020 Product of the Year Awards in the Internet of Things category.
• Gartner Inc. included Scale Computing in the December 2020 Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software. Scale Computing has been recognized in all editions of this Magic Quadrant since Gartner introduced it.

Scale Computing believes it is the top choice for many customers due to the simplicity, efficiency and innovation of Scale Computing HC3. Specifically:

• Simplicity – Scale Computing customers rave about how simple it is to implement and deploy HC3. The simplicity of the self-healing platform, driven by automation and machine intelligence, allows Scale Computing customers to focus on other strategic projects rather than infrastructure maintenance.
• Efficiency – Scale Computing HC3 software eliminates the need for traditional virtualization software, disaster recovery software, servers, and shared storage, replacing these with a fully integrated, highly available system for running applications.
• Innovation – Using patented HyperCore™ technology, the HC3 self-healing platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and corrects problems in the infrastructure in real-time, enabling applications to achieve maximum uptime even when local IT resources and staff are scarce. This innovation makes HC3 simple for IT teams to manage and administer.

Since 2016, the TrustRadius Top Rated Awards have become the industry standard for unbiased recognition of B2B technology products. Based entirely on customer feedback, they have never been influenced by analyst opinion or status as a TrustRadius customer. A detailed breakdown on the methodology and scoring that TrustRadius uses to determine TopRated winners can be found here.

Indianapolis – June 9, 2021 – Scale Computing, a market leader in edge computing, virtualization and hyperconverged solutions, announced KSG, a leading technology distributor in Japan, is now offering the Scale Computing HE150 appliance, powered by Intel® technology. The partnership between Scale Computing and KSG enables organizations to deploy edge computing solutions where existing legacy technologies are frequently too complex and expensive to meet their needs.

The HE150, powered by Scale Computing’s HC3 Edge software platform, is based on the Intel NUC, offering excellent performance to handle a wide range of workloads. The cutting-edge construction and connectivity comes with an extremely small form factor. It consumes a small amount of power, offers ease of installation and an ability to rapidly add devices that scale up rapidly, along with the reliability needed for edge computing and IoT applications.

“A growing number of distributed organizations require infrastructure at the edge of the network, specifically at sites where there are limited IT staff available. With edge computing on the rise, our customers are requiring solutions that can fit small footprint requirements with robust application performance, while still being affordable, efficient and simple to manage remotely,” said Kazuaki Tachibana, CEO of KSG. “We are excited to offer the Scale Computing HE150 as we are making edge computing a financially viable and practical option for more organizations.”

A small, all-flash, NVMe storage-based compute appliance, the HE150 delivers all of the simplicity, efficiency, and enterprise-ready virtualization associated with Scale Computing’s HC3 platform. Built specifically for sites that need highly available infrastructure, the HE150 can be deployed almost anywhere, without requiring a rack or server closet. Taking up only the space needed to stack three smartphones, it also includes high availability clustering, rolling upgrades and integrated data protection.

“We’re thrilled to partner with KSG to bring the HE150 edge computing platform to the Japanese market,” said Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder of Scale Computing. “We have created an alliance strategy with KSG based on the market conditions and business customs specific to Japan and are honored to have them as our go-to-market partner in the region. As technology pushes its way into every part of business, the need for edge computing to support an application-driven world is expanding. The award-winning HC3 Edge technology brings simple, available, and affordable infrastructure for applications in places where IT resources are impossible,” Ready continued.

Industry awards and recognition for the Scale Computing HE150 includes:

• GigaOm naming Scale Computing both a “leader” and “outperformer” in its most recent report, “GigaOm Radar for Hyperconverged Infrastructure: Small-to-Medium Enterprises and Edge.”
• TechTarget’s Storage Magazine & SearchStorage.com selected Scale Computing as a winner for its annual Products of the Year Awards for 2020 for the HE150 in Hyper-converged & Composable Infrastructure.
• TrustRadius recognized Scale Computing with a 2021 Best Feature Set Award, a 2021 Best of Customer Support Award, and a 2021 Best Usability Award. This trifecta of awards highlights the few companies with outstanding feature sets that have gone above and beyond to delight their users. The company ranked first in all three categories.
• The HE150 is a winner of the CRN 2020 Product of the Year Awards in the Internet of Things category.

INDIANAPOLIS – MAY 25, 2021 – Scale Computing, a market leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions, today announced ongoing momentum with customers in education, as its HC3 platform enables educational institutions of all sizes to optimize operations with self-healing, automated infrastructure for all applications in the classroom, the campus, and beyond.

“Educational institutions require powerful systems that can run workloads with efficiency and speed. HC3 allows you to manage any workload of any size, while leaving more resources available for learning,” said Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder of Scale Computing. “With the new American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, education leaders at every level will have federal funding available to invest heavily in new technologies in preparation for greater online learning, summer programming, and the 2021-22 school year. Scale Computing’s HC3 platform combines servers, storage, and virtualization into a single solution to make IT infrastructure easier for schools and universities of every size.”

Educational institutions continue to face tremendous challenges from the past year with the growing demands and pressures of remote learning. Scale Computing’s award-winning HC3 uses self-healing and automation to simplify management, maximize application uptime and performance, and protect data. Scale Computing also celebrates three recent wins in the education sector with new partnerships with Hood College, Virginia Tech, and Community High School District 218.

Auburn University earns its reputation as a premier public institution in part for how it embraces information technology. Like most institutions of higher education, each college within Auburn University functions autonomously from one another with the respective dean deciding how best to appropriate their respective budgets and staff various departments in the interest of its students and programs. Scale Computing’s HC3 platform brings storage, servers, virtualization and management together in a single, comprehensive system. With no virtualization software to license and no external storage to buy, HC3 products lower out-of-pocket costs and radically simplify the infrastructure needed to keep applications running. HC3 products make the deployment and management of a highly available and scalable infrastructure as easy to manage as a single server.

Joel Beckum, IT Coordinator, Auburn University noted, “Scale’s HC3 solution does everything that I need it to. It simplifies my network infrastructure so that I can be an expert. I was a desktop support guy who’s now a system admin. Scale Computing makes me look like a pro. As far as my users know, I’m a genius.”

The New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation is a public school district and has operated as a separate governmental unit since 1956, enrolling approximately 12,000 students in pre-kindergarten through high school programs, and employing more than 1200 full-time personnel. When the school district needed to support immediate work from home solutions in response to COVID-19, they turned to Scale Computing. Leveraging virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) technology, Scale Computing packaged two virtual machine images customers can download for free, and put together a how-to video and trained technical support staff to assist them in deploying the remote work technology solution. The VDI Connection Broker, Gateway, and Agent provide easy, intuitive configuration and management for the Scale Computing HC3 environment, whether using remote access, only on-premise access, or a combination of both. No additional devices or services are needed to get organizations up and running quickly.

As Chris Bowers, IT Manager at The New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation, said, “When the work from home order was delivered the administrative offices needed connectivity and access, but many of the staff did not have a computer at home. Purchasing laptops was not going to happen in such a short time frame, and we did not want the security risk of opening up VPN connectivity to devices we do not manage.”

Bowers continued, “Luckily, we did have Chromebooks on hand and we issued those to people who needed them, but critical applications were a mix of web-based and internally-hosted applications. Scale Computing had emailed their customers with details for a fast solution, and it met our needs. The message claimed deployment would be in an hour or less, and honestly we didn’t really believe it. But it was true – we timed it and we were able to finish deployment in just under an hour. We had the school staff up and running, working from home, and we haven’t received a single support call since. It all just works.”

Willard Public Schools, an award-winning public school system in Willard, Missouri, has been relying on HC3 since 2011 for its long-term, future-proofed IT infrastructure to power its educational institutions. After its 2011 implementation, Willard Public Schools decided to replace all of its remaining legacy infrastructure with Scale Computing, creating an all-in-one hyperconverged solution with reliability, maximum availability, and ease of use. With HC3 as its IT foundation, Willard Public Schools has a future-proofed, efficient, high-performing IT infrastructure. Simplifying its entire IT infrastructure allows Willard’s IT team to focus on more strategic projects.

Willard Public Schools’ technology director Scott Wooldridge noted, “With nine schools spread out across the district, we needed an IT infrastructure that didn’t require us to devote additional time or resources to manage the technology. With HC3, we found a solution that checked all the boxes and allowed our IT team to focus on more strategic projects. Not only is it self-healing and reliable, but it actually does what it says it will.”