Subscribe

AWS launches Greengrass

Paula Gilbert
By Paula Gilbert, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Las Vegas, 02 Dec 2016
Greengrass was unveiled at the AWS re:Invent Conference in Las Vegas.
Greengrass was unveiled at the AWS re:Invent Conference in Las Vegas.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has evolved its Internet of things (IOT) service with the launch of AWS Greengrass, which allows customers to run AWS Lambda functions on connected devices without having to constantly connect to the cloud.

This is useful for IOT devices that are running in low connectivity areas, or in environments where constant reconnection to the cloud slows down functionality.

Greengrass was unveiled at the AWS re:Invent Conference in Las Vegas and allows devices to send messages to one another on a local network even when there is no available connection to AWS.

"You can run AWS Lambda or AWS IOT services right on the device so you don't have to make the roundtrip to the cloud and back again," Matt Wood, GM of product strategy at AWS, told ITWeb in an interview on the side-lines of the conference.

"So in disconnected environments, whether they are permanently disconnected or if they have intermittent connectivity, the application will just keep on running because it doesn't need the cloud to do it. So you can take your Lambda functions that run up on AWS and run them locally with the same programming model across all of your devices,"

AWS says that with the proliferation of IOT devices, enterprises are increasingly managing on-premises infrastructure that is not located in a data centre, such as connected devices in factories, oil wells, agricultural fields, hospitals, cars, etc. Because these devices are powered by microprocessors that have limited processing power and memory, they often rely heavily on AWS and the cloud for processing, analytics and storage.

"However, there are circumstances when relying exclusively on the cloud isn't optimal due to latency requirements or intermittent connectivity that make a round trip to the cloud unfeasible. In these situations, IOT devices must be able to perform some tasks locally," the company says in a statement.

"For our customers who are pioneering large-scale IOT deployments, connected devices represent a growing percentage of their infrastructure, and as they move quickly to migrate their servers to the cloud, these IOT devices will become the primary on-premises infrastructure customers are managing - this is the next generation of hybrid IT," according to Marco Argenti, VP of mobile and IOT at AWS.

"Customers want their IOT devices to be able to perform computing tasks and process data locally, functioning as a seamless extension of their AWS environment. AWS Greengrass makes this possible by putting a 'mini AWS', a select set of AWS capabilities, inside connected devices," Argenti adds.

An interesting use case for the service is NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which operates complex machinery such as Mars Rovers in the harshest environments in space or on Earth. JPL relies on the ability of its robots to execute code locally on Earth, Mars and elsewhere in the solar system.

JPL now has AWS Greengrass running on "Rov-E" (Remotely Operated Vehicle for Education), showing how JPL can speed up the programming and testing of its robots. JPL is working with Greengrass to perform big data calculations and analytics in the cloud with the same code working online and offline, maximising the value of data collected, and better translating expert insights into physical actions.

A growing ecosystem of semiconductor manufacturers, including Intel, Qualcomm and Annapurna Labs, are also integrating AWS Greengrass into their platforms and devices.

Greengrass works on almost any device with a general-purpose CPU that runs Ubuntu or Amazon Linux, and supports ARM and x86 architectures.

Share