Edge computing is gaining the spotlight as an increasing volume of enterprise data is created and processed outside a traditional centralized data center or cloud. Gartner Inc. predicts that nearly 75% of data will be generated at the edge five years from now.

Startup Pensando Systems Inc. directly addresses the generational shift occurring as data growth drives the cloud toward the edge. Its platform seeks to deliver programmable software-defined cloud, compute, networking, storage and security services wherever data is located, improving performance when compared to current architectures.

“The single thread performance measure of a CPU is not growing fast at all … is only growing nowadays like few points percent a year, maybe 4% a year,” said Silvano Gai (pictured), fellow at Pensando. “The core needs to be really used for user application or customer application, and all what is non-essential can be moved to some domain specific … that can do that in a much better fashion.”

Gai spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during Pensando’s Future Proof Your Enterprise event. They discussed Pensando’s strategy at the edge, important use cases of its solutions, and the need for security in this environment. (* Disclosure below.)

Card offloads tasks from the main processor

Pensando has engineered a data center chip to handle computing tasks related to network management, security and storage. The startup provides the chip as part of accelerator cards that can be plugged into a server to offload these tasks from the machine’s main processor. The result, according to Pensando, is a 20% to 40% reduction in central processing unit utilization.

One of the most important use cases for Pensando’s solutions is telemetry, according to Gai.

“Doing telemetry means thinking of data apart, building data apart … not only measuring everything [in] real time, but also sending out that measurement without involving anything else,” he said. “So, the measurement becomes really very efficient, and the data … becomes really usable data, actionable data in real time.”

Another use case refers to the bidirectional ERSPAN, which involves the capability of coping data and sending data with the card to a station. It allows the manager to observe the network and be able to diagnose problems, Gai explained.

Encryption ensures privacy

Data processing requires good security tools, which are also in Pensando’s scope. Due to huge privacy concerns that organizations have, for example, there is an increasing need to encrypt data not only between data centers, but now also inside the data center, according to Gai.

“When you look at a large bank, for example, a large bank is no longer a single organization. A large bank is multiple organizations that are compartmentalized by law that need to keep things separate by law, by regulation, by FCC regulation,” Gai pointed out. “And if you don’t have encryption and if you don’t have distributed file, [it] is really very difficult to achieve that.”

Pensando sees customers in two main branches: One is the cloud provider, and the other is the enterprise. The cloud provider already has a huge management infrastructure and already knows which feature it wants to enable, Gai explained. “They just want the card to provide the data plan performers for that particular feed, so we’re going to build something particular … that adapts to that cloud provider architecture,” he said.

Enterprises have different needs. They want, for example, a complete solution, with the card in the management station, Gai explained. “[It] is required to make from day one a working solution, which is absolutely correct in enterprise environment,” he added.

Companies also need an integrated solution, involving the tools they already have. “Most of the customers are asking us to integrate with VMware, which is a very reasonable demand,” Gai concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Pensando’s Future Proof Your Enterprise event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Future Proof Your Enterprise event. Neither Pensando Systems Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE