Lenovo bolsters GPU-rich edge server to ThinkEdge portfolio

The ThinkEdge SE450 is aimed at advancing intelligent edge capabilities with AI-ready technology that provides faster insights and leading computing performance to more environments, accelerating real-time decision making designed to boost full business potential.

To better address challenges and capture competitive advantage from today’s “Smart Normal”, businesses must be able to harness real-time AI insights directly at the edge-sites according to Sumir Bhatia, president - APAC, Lenovo ISG.

“With speed and agility being top-of-mind, we are developing powerful, secure and flexible solutions that reduce response time to market and increase value to customers.

“We have designed the ThinkEdge SE450 server to minimise business complexities and enhance compute power in remote locations with a wide variety of workloads."

"Whether it is real-time patient monitoring, diagnoses, in healthcare, or efficient traffic management systems in smart cities, or predictive maintenance on the manufacturing line, we are delivering on our promise of AI at the edge,” Bhatia said.

Accelerating business insights at the edge

Edge computing is at the heart of digital transformation for many industries as they seek to optimise how to process data directly at the point of origin.

Gartner estimates that 75 percent of enterprise-generated data will be processed at the edge by 2025 and 80 percent of enterprise IoT projects will incorporate AI by 2022. Lenovo customers are using edge-driven data sources for immediate decision making on factory floors, retail shelves, city streets and telecommunication mobile sites, and Lenovo’s complete ThinkEdge portfolio is designed to go beyond the data centre to deliver the ultimate edge computing power experience.

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According to Khaled Al Suwaidi, vice-president, fixed and mobile core at Etisalat, as an early testing partner, the company's current deployment of Lenovo’s ThinkEdge SE450 server is hosting a 5G network delivered on edge sites and introducing new edge applications to enterprises.

“Expanding our cloud to on-premise enables faster data processing while adding resiliency, performance and enhanced user experiences.

“It gives us a compact, ruggedised platform with the necessary performance to host our telecom infrastructure and deliver applications, such as e-learning, to users,” Al Suwaidi said.

Enhanced performance, scalability and security

Designed to stretch the limitations of server locations, Lenovo’s ThinkEdge SE450 aims to deliver real-time insights with enhanced compute power and flexible deployment capabilities that can support multiple AI workloads while allowing customers to scale.

It meets the demands of a wide variety of critical workloads with a unique, quieter go-anywhere form factor, featuring a shorter depth that allows it to be easily installed in space constrained locations. The GPU-rich server is purpose-built to meet the requirements of vertically specific edge environments, with a ruggedised design that withstands a wider operating temperature, as well as high dust, shock and vibration for harsh settings.

As one of the first NVIDIA-Certified Edge systems, Lenovo’s ThinkEdge SE450 leverages NVIDIA GPUs for enterprise and industrial AI at the edge applications, providing maximum accelerated performance.

Security at the edge is crucial and Lenovo is aiming to enable businesses to navigate the edge-to-cloud frontier confidently, using resilient, better secured infrastructure solutions that are designed to mitigate security risks and data threats.

The ThinkEdge portfolio is designed to provide a variety of connectivity and security options that are easily deployed and more securely managed in today’s remote environments, including a new locking bezel to help prevent unauthorised access and robust security features to better protect data.

The ThinkEdge SE450 is built on the latest 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor with Intel Deep Learning Boost technologies, featuring all-flash storage for running AI and analytics at the edge and optimised for delivering intelligence.

It has been verified by Intel as an Intel Select Solution for vRAN. This pre-validated solution is designed to take the guesswork out of the evaluation and procurement process by meeting strictly defined hardware and software configuration requirements and rigorous system-wide performance benchmarks to speed deployment and lower risk for communications service providers.

According to Jeni Panhorst, vice-president and general manager of the network and edge platforms division at Intel, the collaboration with Lenovo helps enterprises across many sectors drive business value through network transformation and edge computing.

“Resilient and flexible edge servers built with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors provide enhanced performance enabling the delivery of innovative AI-driven services where customers will expect them,” Panhorst added.

Edge site locations are often unmanned and hard to reach. The ThinkEdge SE450 is automatically installed and managed with Lenovo Open Cloud Automation (LOC-A) and easily configured with Lenovo XClarity Orchestrator software. Remote access to the server, via a completely out-of-band wired or wireless access, avoids any unnecessary trip to the edge locations.

AI-ready solutions at the edge

The ThinkEdge SE450 AI-ready server is designed specifically for enabling a vast ecosystem of partners to make it easier for customers to deploy these edge solutions.

Through an agile hardware development approach with partners and customers, the Lenovo ThinkEdge SE450 is the culmination of multiple prototypes, with live trials running real workloads in telecommunication, retail and smart city settings.

As enterprises build out their hybrid infrastructures from the cloud to the edge, it is the perfect extension for the on-premise cloud currently supporting Microsoft, NVIDIA, Red Hat and VMware technologies.

Providing a complete portfolio of Edge servers, AI-ready storage and solutions, Lenovo offerings are also available as-a-service through Lenovo TruScale, which easily extends workloads from the edge to the cloud in a consumption-based model.

[Related: IBM to deliver cyber training program in SA]