The world is undergoing a complete transformation in the generation and consumption of data. This transformation is being driven by the rapidly accelerating growth of intelligent devices that not only consume data but also increasingly generate it. One of Arm’s key challenges over the next decade is to look at a world that has more than a trillion intelligent devices and anticipating the technological challenges this world poses.
The key challenge will be in the architecture of the network. The explosion of intelligent devices will drive a paradigm shift in the way information is stored, processed, and managed. The current Internet and mobile networks are generally focused on centralized architectures such as massive cloud data centers and operator mobile cores. The networks are architected for use cases where data generally flows from the cloud to the endpoints.
The emerging world of intelligent devices, however, will necessitate an architectural shift based on taking data generated by the endpoints, processing and analyzing that data at multiple points along the edge of the network and only transporting crucial data back to the cloud.
This new era will move away from one-size-fits-all servers and application-specific hardware to a greater diversity of software-driven applications running on flexible architectures that are tailored towards specific application needs. This transformation to a world where much of the computing moves from the data center to the edge will generate new use cases. These include areas such as
Arm’s mission is to ensure that the Arm ecosystem – both its hardware and software partners -- can fully address the challenges of this transition to an IoT and edge-focused industry. And one of the biggest challenges in that transition is security, and how to ensure device security once the device is moved from the physical security of the data center to an unsecured location in the world.
Arm’s mission is to ensure that the Arm ecosystem - both our hardware and software partners - can fully address the challenges of this transition to an IoT and edge-focused industry. And one of the biggest challenges in that transition is security.
How can we ensure device security once the device is moved from the physical security of the data center to an unsecured location in the world? This is where Clavister comes in.
The need to have security front and center in emerging use cases is why Arm is officially welcoming cybersecurity veteran Clavister into the Arm Developer Ecosystem. Clavister works closely with large infrastructure customer service providers across Europe and North America, and its technology has helped to secure some of the world's largest networking providers.
As part of our recognition of Clavister as an innovator in the area of networking security, Arm has signed a strategic technology partnership with Clavister to help them integrate their technology into the edge areas where we see Arm's future.
Clavister has two main firewall product lines:
The initial collaboration focuses on NetWall, the first proprietary next-gen firewall that has been ported to Arm. It is a full-featured solution that enables end users to realize a wide variety of security use cases. These include:
The major advantage that Clavister brings to these use cases is their proprietary OS. NetWall leverages this OS to provide coverage for multiple security use cases while maintaining an extremely low footprint.
One of the concerns threading together each of these new use cases is security. As infrastructure moves away from controlled physical environments such as data centers, users must rely on on-device hardware and software to provide crucial security. In addition, many of the emerging use cases will utilize smaller CPUs to provide the power efficiency and form-factor necessary.
For example, take a smart city scenario where small form factor devices placed on lamp posts serve as traffic management solutions, tracking the flow of cars and providing local computing for navigation systems. Such small form factor devices will utilize efficient CPUs and will need a firewall solution that is capable of running in a small footprint, like Clavister's NetWall.
We see a number of cooperation areas for multiple edge computing scenarios, especially in fields such as Industrial IoT. In addition, Arm and Clavister plan to work together to push innovation in the fields of telecom network virtualization and next-gen automotive computing platforms.
Arm’s strategic agreement with Clavister is part of our overall strategy of enabling the broadest software ecosystem to address the growing needs of infrastructure. This includes support for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and containerization to support the growth of new use cases.
The first area of cooperation in this space will be in Arm-based Universal Customer Premise Equipment (uCPE).
uCPE technology is transforming enterprise business services by replacing dedicated hardware devices such as firewalls and SD-WAN appliances. These hardware appliances are being replaced with software-defined virtualized network functions (VNFs) that can be delivered to flexible whitebox.
The Arm ecosystem has been working closely on the development of Arm-based uCPEs. Along with our SoC partners NXP and Marvell we have developed a number of uCPE devices designed to fit the needs of enterprise and SMB customers. These Arm-based uCPE utilize the Arm ecosystem advantages in multi-core efficiency and on-chip acceleration.
The first generation of Arm uCPEs are powered by the Telco Systems NFV-Time management system. Clavister and Telco Systems have signed a strategic partnership agreement that will enable joint go to market activities. Clavister has ported its NetWall VNF on Arm, and working with Telco Systems it will provide the NetWall VNF as a security solution for Tier-1 mobile operators providing uCPE devices to their enterprise customers.
The Arm ecosystem is uniquely suited to the security challenges of architecting the world of one trillion intelligent devices. The flexibility of Arm-based computing allows Arm devices to find the right combination of compute, networking and storage to provide an optimized solution from the endpoints through the edge to the core.
The addition of Clavister to the Arm ecosystem is another demonstration of a forward-looking software vendor who sees the advantage of Arm-based technology in the changing world of networking infrastructure and wants to help define it for decades to come.
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