Broadcom Inc.’s VMware subsidiary took several steps today to address the edge computing environment with a focus on making it easier for customers to modernize networks and create new services.

The company announced edge computing products designed to simplify delivery of software-defined services for a multi-network and multicloud orchestration platform incorporating 5G and edge devices.

“When one of our customers wants to go and deploy compute at the edge or digitize the edge, it’s not a very simple and easy path,” said Saadat Malik (pictured), vice president and general manager of edge computing at VMware. “You have to worry about what software you are going to use, how you’re going to run that software, what hardware you are going to use. VMware Edge Compute Stack essentially solves this problem. It makes it very easy for our customers to go from the idea to actual outcome in a seamless and pain-free manner.”

Malik spoke with theCUBE Research analysts Shelly Kramer, Savannah Peterson and Dave Vellante at MWC Barcelona, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed VMware’s technology and how edge deployments are transforming customer environments. (* Disclosure below.)

VMware facilitates edge solutions for manufacturing safety

One of the key use cases for edge computing involves manufacturing environments. VMware has been focused on leveraging open industrial Ethernet connectivity solutions, such as Profinet, to implement faster, more efficient edge solutions.

“Speed is huge, speed is everything in these environments,” Malik said. “Let’s say you have a robot that is swinging, and a camera detects a person in its path so the robot needs to stop. You cannot rely on connectivity outside the manufacturing plant for that decision to be made. With Profinet, the protocol that these people run on these factory floors, we are implementing a real-time version of that in the Edge Compute Stack.”

Along with safety on the manufacturing floor, VMware is also working with healthcare providers to implement edge technologies for patient care. The company has an ambulance prominently displayed in its booth this week at MWC Barcelona to demonstrate how edge compute can provide critical support in real time.

“Just like a hospital where we would bring IoT and computers … to enable the knowledge workers, as well as the operational aspect of things, it’s the same way in this ambulance. We have compute in there,” Malik explained. “You can wear virtual reality goggles, and the person, the technician in the ambulance, who’s perhaps trying to resuscitate somebody … can talk to an expert back at the hospital and the expert can see what’s going on in the ambulance.”

Growth of edge deployments has sparked interest in the developer community, according to Malik. He cited one large retail VMware customer in the U.K. to illustrate this trend.

“This retailer has 5,000 strong developer communities within their company,” he said. “They built a platform that allows them to gather customer sentiment data … to improve the experience of people walking into these stores. These developers are actually sitting there writing apps, building apps, which allows all of this to happen in an innovative way. Edge is very much about the developer community.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of MWC Barcelona:

(* Disclosure: VMware Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither VMware nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE