Let’s say you’re a passenger on a cruise ship. Floating in the middle of the ocean, far from reliable Wi-Fi, you wear a device that lets you into your room, that discreetly tracks your move from the bar to the dinner table to the pool and delivers your drink order wherever you are. You can buy sunscreen or toothpaste or souvenirs in the ship’s stores without touching anything. If you’re a Carnival Cruise Lines passenger, this is reality right now, in part because of the company’s partnership with Couchbase, according to Mark Gamble, product and solutions marketing director, Couchbase. Couchbase provides a cloud native, no SQL database technology that's used to power applications for customers including Carnival but also Amadeus, Comcast, LinkedIn, and Tesco. In Carnival’s case, Gamble said, “they run an edge data center on their ships to power their Ocean Medallion application, which they are super proud of. They use it a lot in their ads, because it provides a personalized service, which is a differentiator for them to their customers.” In this episode of The New Stack Makers, Gamble spoke to Heather Joslyn, features editor of TNS, about edge computing, 5G, and Couchbase Capella, its Database as a Service (DBaaS) offering for enterprises. This episode of Makers was sponsored by Couchbase.
Let’s say you’re a passenger on a cruise ship. Floating in the middle of the ocean, far from reliable Wi-Fi, you wear a device that lets you into your room, that discreetly tracks your move from the bar to the dinner table to the pool and delivers your drink order wherever you are. You can buy sunscreen or toothpaste or souvenirs in the ship’s stores without touching anything.
If you’re a Carnival Cruise Lines passenger, this is reality right now, in part because of the company’s partnership with Couchbase, according to Mark Gamble, product and solutions marketing director, Couchbase.
Couchbase provides a cloud native, no SQL database technology that's used to power applications for customers including Carnival but also Amadeus, Comcast, LinkedIn, and Tesco.
In Carnival’s case, Gamble said, “they run an edge data center on their ships to power their Ocean Medallion application, which they are super proud of. They use it a lot in their ads, because it provides a personalized service, which is a differentiator for them to their customers.”
In this episode of The New Stack Makers, Gamble spoke to Heather Joslyn, features editor of TNS, about edge computing, 5G, and Couchbase Capella, its Database as a Service (DBaaS) offering for enterprises.
This episode of Makers was sponsored by Couchbase.
The goal of edge computing, Gamble told our podcast audience, is bring data and compute closer to the applications that consume it. This speeds up data processing, he said, “because data doesn't have to travel all the way to the cloud and back.” But it also has other benefits
“This serves to make applications more reliable, because local data processing sort of removes internet slowness and outages from the equation,” he said.
The innovation of 5G networks has also had a big impact on reducing latency and increasing uptime, Gamble said.
“To compare with 4G, things like the average round trip data travel time between the device, and the cell tower is like 15 milliseconds. And with 5G, that latency drops to like two milliseconds. And 5G can support they say, a million devices, within a third of a mile radius, way more than what's possible with 4G.”
But 5G, Gamble said, “really requires edge computing to realize its its full potential.” Increasingly, he said, Couchbase hears interest from its customers in building “offline-first” applications, which can run even in Wi-Fi dead zones.
The use cases, he said, are everywhere: “When I pass a fast food restaurant, it's starting to become more common, where you'll see that, instead of just a box you're talking to, there's a person holding a tablet, and they walk down the line, and they're taking orders. And as they come closer to the restaurant, it syncs up with the kitchen. They find that just a better, more efficient way to serve customers. And so it becomes a competitive differentiator forum.”
As part of Couchbase’s Capella product, it recently announced Capella App Service, a new capability for mobile developers, is a fully managed backend designed for mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and edge applications.
“Developers use it to access and sync data between the Database as a Service and their edge devices, as well as it handles authenticating and managing mobile and edge app users,” he said.
Used in conjunction with Couchbase Lite, a lightweight, embedded NoSQL database used with mobile and IoT devices, Capella App Services synchronizes the data between backend and edge devices.
Even for workers in remote areas, “eventually, you have to make sure that data updates are shared with the rest of the ecosystem,” Gamble said. “ And that's what App Services is meant to do, as conductivity allows — so during network disruptions in areas with no internet, apps will still continue to operate.”
Check out the rest of the conversation to learn more about edge computing and the challenges Gamble thinks still need to be addressed in that space.
Alex Williams 0:08
You're listening to the new stack makers, a podcast made for people who develop, deploy and manage at scale software. For more conversations and articles go to the new stack dot I O. All right now on with the show.
Colleen Coll 0:29
Couchbase delivers a high performance, flexible and scalable, modern database that runs across the data center. And any cloud. Many of the world's largest enterprises rely on Couchbase to power the core applications their businesses depend on.
Heather Joslyn 0:49
Hi, and welcome to another episode of the new stack makers podcast. I'm your host, Heather Jazlyn, Features Editor of the new stack and today we're gonna be talking about the edge Internet of Things or IoT to its friends, and dealing with data in those environments. Our guest today to help us explore this topic is Mark gamble. Mark is product and Solutions Marketing Director at Couchbase. Hi, Mark. Hey, Heather. Mark, can you tell us a little bit about Couchbase? And what it does? Yeah, first,
Mark Gamble 1:14
thanks for having me to you. And the new stack. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah. Couchbase is a cloud native, no SQL database technology that's used the power really gigantic applications like those for our customers at LinkedIn, and Tesco, and Comcast, Amadeus, you know, and more big enterprises, who use us to power their really critical applications. And I like to describe Couchbase as sort of this combination of no SQL database concepts. So first is the processing of key value information in memory for hyperfast responsiveness. This is how a lot of websites stay lightning fast, for example. And then second, the distributed storage of JSON based documents, you know, document based data in a schema less nature for, you know, flexibility, because it's JSON and then resilience because it's a distributed architecture. And then to this, you add full support for containerization mobile and edge capabilities, which we'll talk more about today. And a full set of built in features like SQL query support, something you don't usually find with a no SQL database. And full text search. eventing analytics is really a multi model database. And these are things that our customers, you know, also no longer half a bolt together from a bunch of different technologies. It's all part and parcel and sort of, with all of this, you have Couchbase in a nutshell, and Couchbase, Capella I have to mention is our flagship enterprise class Database as a Service. So it provides all those features I just talked about, of Couchbase, but fully hosted and managed in the cloud. So that's sort of Couchbase in a nutshell.
Heather Joslyn 2:52
Okay, terrific. And we'll talk a little bit more about kapela. Later in the conversation, there's a lot to talk about. So let's just dive right in. If you're if you're working for an enterprise, what are some of the most common use cases for which you might be running workloads at the edge or through an IoT device? Sure,
Mark Gamble 3:08
you know, typically, when I'm asked these kind of questions, I like to sort of define what edge computing means to me or, and that leads into the to the question for sure. So the essential goal of edge computing is really to bring data and compute, you know, closer to the applications that consume it. In other words, put, you know, put the database near to where the data happens, including on the device itself. And this makes apps go faster, because, you know, data doesn't have to travel all the way to the cloud and back, very simple concept. But this serves to make, you know, applications more reliable, because local data processing sort of removes internet slowness and outages from the equation. And they're sort of the spectrum when it comes to edge architectures. And, you know, on one side, there's a, you know, a standalone edge device, you know, where the database is embedded to the applications that run on the device. And so the, you're, you're talking to usual cast of characters here, right? Smartphones, tablets, scanners, IoT devices, these these common devices that are typically used at the edge. And, you know, we've all seen the overnight delivery driver, you know, that custom ruggedized tablet scanning packages in the back of that delivery van, that's kind of a perfect example of an edge device. And then sort of on the other edge of the spectrum, if you will, you have edge data centers. And by that I don't mean a gigantic, you know, cold room, it could be an IT closet in a restaurant, or a server rack on a cruise ship, or in a warehouse or big box retail store. And these mini data centers, if you will power apps and IoT devices within their local radius. And we're an app falls in this spectrum sort of depends on the scale and, and downstream clients that it has to serve. But in these cases, you know, both sides of the spectrum. It's all about bringing that data closer to the application or clients that use it.
Heather Joslyn 4:58
My understanding too, is of edge computing is sometimes it's also not just to have the data be stored or analyze where it is. But also some jurisdictions have rules about where data can live.
Mark Gamble 5:11
Totally. edge computing is a great enabler of kind of, you know, better data governance, because yes, you can do things like keep data where regulations dictate, you know, if your hospital you can keep data in the data center on premises, you know, sensitive data never has to leave the edge. And so you're spot on that data governance is another clear benefit of edge computing, you know, you asked originally about use cases, and that's actually where it starts to kind of illustrate these these concepts. So the use cases are really vast that we're seeing at Couchbase, you know, wherever there's the need for accessing data more quickly and efficiently, or governing that data, you know, better at the source edge computing can help. So consider like an offshore oil rig at sea. You know, a typical platform can produce terabytes of data every day from sensors and devices all over the place. And, you know, monitoring, analyzing that data is really the only way to run the platform efficiently. But the data just, you know, comes so fast. And there's so much of it, that it's impossible for operators to monitor and analyze it all, you know, especially in real time. And so they compensate by slowing down operations. And add to that the need to also operate in remote locations like the North Sea, right, we're reliable, internet's really scarce. And when it is available, it's usually via satellite, and it's a slow and costly. And so now imagine the pressure valve, let's say on the on the platform, it sends readings to be analyzed in the cloud, if you're using a cloud model, to detect possible problems or failure. And it takes time, right for the data to go upstream, get processed, get a result, come back down the wire. And by the time you get that result, the valve might have failed. And, you know, if the internet isn't available at all, the app just can't analyze data at all. So it's downtime. And that's, you know, it can lead to downtime or worse. So, edge computing solves for this by putting the database on the platform, for example, and even onto the apps running on the IoT devices. And on operators, you know, smartphones and laptops. And in this way, data is synchronized locally, create the sort of local ecosystem, if you will, and analyze locally, no long wait, no internet outages to to deal with, and the apps work reliably, you know, without internet, so that that's one I think, illustrative use case. But you know, we see this used in Point of Sale applications in retail. So by leveraging a local data center, you know, retail outlets can continue to serve as customers, even if the network fails. It's, again, super simple concept with huge implications. You know, business downtime, hurts sales, but it also hurts reputation. And people tend to air grievances these days, about poor experience on social media. So business running, never happens, right? But that's one of the reasons that our customers come to us because they know, you know, keeping business running applications available, is how you keep customers happy and eliminate, or try and eliminate downtime. So you know, move that data processing to the edge, retailers can eliminate those dependencies on the cloud and internet and get better guarantees of uptime. And so we see, you know, I mentioned hospitals, manufacturing's, another one Croute, the cruise industry kind of circling back around, and this this answer with this, because I think it's another great use case, you know, ships can use onboard data centers, instead of cloud data centers for passenger services. And one of our customers is Carnival Cruise Lines. And they run an edge data center on their ships to power their ocean medallion application, which are super proud of they use it in a lot of their ads, because it provides us personalized service, which is a differentiator for them, you know, to their customers. It's an IoT device that every passenger wears, and it lets, you know, lets them into their room and what some change, when they move from the bar to the dinner table into the pool, their drink will follow them and, you know, they can buy amenities anytime without touching anything. And it works even when not connected to the internet. So you know, these are just sort of some of the kinds of edge use cases that we're seeing our our customers adopt and implement.
Heather Joslyn 9:23
Obviously, you know, mobile devices are a big user of edge computing, as we mentioned, in mobile providers are rolling out 5g networks all over the world. Where does 5g fit into all of the story of edge computing?
Mark Gamble 9:34
Sure. Yeah, so 5g is super hot. It's like what my grandma even knows five, you know, she started to say, oh, that's 5g, like, okay? It's it's more than a buzzword. It's yeah, it's out there if my grandma even knows about it, so, but there's good reason for the hype, right? It's, you know, to cook to compare with 4g, you know, things like the average round trip data travel time between the device and the cell tower. was like 15 milliseconds. And with 5g that latency drops to like two milliseconds. And 5g can support they say, a million devices within a third of a mile radius, way more than what's possible with 4g, and it boasts, you know, multi gigs per second data transfer, just mind boggling, blazing speed. And that leads some to ask, well, you know, that's super fast. Why do you need edge computing to speed things up. And, you know, the benefits of 5g, it needs to be clear are really they apply to the last hop, right, the the radius from the tower, that distance from the cell tower to the device, everything within there a super fast, but then the round trip from the tower to a cloud data center and back and still take up up to 500 milliseconds or more depending really on where you are. So this means that apps that use a cloud database still rely on internet to operate even on a 5g network. And a speedier kind of final hop can't make up for overall internet latency or outages. And so, so kind of my lead in there is to get the full benefits of 5g, I think you need to bring the processing of data, you know, within the 5g radius, or, you know, I think 5g really requires edge computing to realize its its full potential,
Heather Joslyn 11:19
I understand Couchbase, we talked a little bit about the need for data processing and storage, when internet is spotty, or nonexistent. My understanding is that Couchbase has been hearing more from customers about looking for offline first applications and the data needs involved. What does Coach base do to address those these issues involved in in offline first apps?
Mark Gamble 11:38
Yeah, offline. First is, you know, two years ago, I heard the term and I was like, hmm, you know, sort of, you can kind of sort of guess what it means. But now, we're hearing it more and more, but the thing is, our customers don't come to us and ask for offline first, they come to us with specific problems that are always you know, related to network connectivity and and their apps reliance on it. And it's it's risk of failure. So we're seeing more and more of these, you know, offline first, app requirements. And it's really a class of legit application where the app has to operate in areas of no internet for kind of extended periods of time. And we're not talking, you know, going through a short tunnel or a few subway stops, I mean, I'm talking where there's no internet at all for hours or days or longer. So places like underground in a mind, or in, you know, deep in remote wilderness or driving through the middle of Iowa, or in the world's longest flight, right. And we're it's just announced Dubai to Panama City, 17 hours. These are places where internet is typically available, but we're still in a strong need for work to be done and goods to be sold, and customers to service. So kind of this defining characteristic of offline first apps is working in isolation with the need for the apps to work even when completely disconnected. And so some examples would be like insurance agents, you know, making claims adjustments and in the field, they need to sell and update policy information. in disaster areas, maybe where there's little or no network connectivity. Another example is inspectors at utility companies that perform maintenance activities, you know, they work on equipment and conduct repairs, and need access to task lists and historic inspection results and infrastructure maps, but they sometimes need it, you know, working out in the middle of nowhere, you know, on some wind turbine, but then, you know, that doesn't, it doesn't only mean remote, it can also be in the middle of a major metropolitan area in your restaurants. You know, they want to streamline meal ordering and drive thru order experience for their customers. In many cases, they're extending that service after the parking lot or the curbside, you know, taking adjust orders for mobile devices, how many places do we pull into not that I eat fast food. But when I painted this restaurant, it's starting to become more common, where you'll see that instead of just a box you talking to there's a person holding a tablet, and they walk down the line, and they're taking orders. And as they come closer to the restaurants syncs up with the kitchen, they find that just a better more efficient way to serve customers. And so it becomes a competitive differentiator for them. And mobile clinics are another example of offline first. And you know, these are real customer examples I'm talking about but you know, healthcare workers in remote rural locations can pull up, you know, patient medical history and update prescriptions and things like that, even when there's no connectivity available. You know, Couchbase provides this developer friendly mobile database and it has synchronization built in. So not only is local data processing, but it can share that data across this app ecosystem. And it serves these types of use cases perfectly and our customers use our database to build offline first apps that are impervious if you will to internet slowness, or outages and you know, sort of, to help illustrate that another customer tale, if you will. And I just think there's so evocative of what it is, you know. So backpack EMR is one of our customers, and they provide apps for mobile clinics in remote and underserved areas where there's little to no internet. And we're talking to villages in Haiti, these kinds of things. And they embed Couchbase, to the apps that run on tablets. And this allows them, of course, to operate a completely disconnected mode. But they also leverage built in peer to peer synchronization, so that they create this little mini clinic where nobody, you know, people are walking around with a database in their hand, but it's also sharing with everyone. And so clinicians, you know, get access to patient histories updated in real time, it's shared across the clinic, and they can instantly and securely, you know, share that from registration to vitals, to labs and exam rooms, even through to the pharmacy. And, you know, this, this kind of ability to work in isolation, but still collaborate. I think it's a unique feature to Couchbase. But so illustrative I guess, so that offline first capability, they can set up a mini hospital, and it doesn't matter that they're in the middle of the desert, it's, it's going to work, you know, and so, sort of leveraging Couchbase ensure that that, you know, works everywhere, all the time, nature. I'm proud of backpack EMR as a customer, I think they really helped me provide vital health care for areas of the world that need it. Yeah, it
Heather Joslyn 16:35
sounds like it could be potentially life saving too. I mean to people, Dude, can you tell me a little bit about Capella? What is what is Capella? And what's new in that area? Sure.
Mark Gamble 16:44
So Couchbase, Capella is our database as a service. So when I talked about Couchbase, that aisle, if you will, it's it's kapela is all of that as a fully hosted and managed service. And so what that does, it allows our customers to adopt Couchbase adopt no sequel, really quickly, they don't have to procure hardware and install it. And it's just out there as a service that they sign up for and often running. So it becomes this, you know, boon to developer productivity, you know, have to manage infrastructure on the database side anymore. And and we recently are excited to announce a introduce Capella app services. So this has worked in tandem with the database as a service, it's a really popular new capability for mobile developers. And App Services provides this fully managed back end designed for mobile IoT and edge applications. And developers use it to access and sync data between the database as a service and their edge devices, as well as it handles authenticating and managing mobile and edge app users. So sort of talking about the Couchbase mobile stack. It's made up of three pieces. Couchbase. Capella is really the, you know, kind of bedrock that, you know, fully managed cloud, no SQL database as a service. And then Capelle app services I just talked to, that's the fully managed service for back end bi directional sync. And it handles authentication, access control, and then Couchbase Lite, which I don't think I've mentioned yet, but this is the database, it's Couchbase, that is meant to be embedded. So it's lightweight, embedded no SQL database, there are customers embed to their mobile apps and IoT devices. And Capelle. App Services is really arguably the sort of binding ingredient in the mix here, synchronizing the data between the back end database and edge devices and providing sort of this key component of partition tolerance, you know, getting into the CAP theorem, a little bit of edge computing. So without App Services, data changes are shared across the app ecosystem. And I talked about, you know, work in isolation, but eventually, you have to make sure that, you know, data updates are shared with the rest of the ecosystem. And that's what app services is meant to do as conductivity allows so and during network disruptions in areas with no internet apps will still continue to operate, thanks to that embedded database. So App Services is included with a cappella free trial. So I really want to, you know, encourage your listeners to check it out. Try it for yourself, just go to cloud.couchbase.com and hit the Sign Up button. And you'll be you know, working with the database in minutes. It's really impressive how quickly it works.
Heather Joslyn 19:28
Looking ahead, what do you think of some of the biggest problems still did still need to be solved regarding data in the edge IoT environments?
Mark Gamble 19:35
Sure. I mean, my my answer, you know, once might have been complexity, right. It takes careful planning and some know how to adopt an edge architecture. But you know, as edge computing has caught on a technology like Couchbase has become available. It's getting easier. But But as our customers who build these offline first apps we were talking about No, you know, network connectivity. is a constant challenge. So maybe I'll go with, you know, networks as the yet to fully solve issue with edge, you know, and the network really remains a big potential point of failure for any edge architecture, it's an integral. But it's also that point of failure. And it's because all networks, you know, suffer from issues at some point, you know, signal degradation, line condition, mechanical failure, cloud cover temperature, you know, these can all affect network speed and availability. And all networks have these issues, you know, whether they're wired or wireless, or 5g or satellite or Bluetooth, etc. You know, even if one goes faster than the other none is, you know, totally immune to being slow or failing out, right. So, but one might posit how does this affect an edge device with its own local data processing? Well, it's back to you know, when it comes to sharing that data, in a multi user application where data changes, rapidly, local changes have to be sent to the rest of the app ecosystem. And so sync Apps has to happen in spite of these network issues. And it Couchbase we've always tried to, you know, we feel we've always understood this imperfect nature of networks and have, we've provided the means for developers to work around these issues by making sync, automatic, and making sure that it can take advantage of any connectivity, no matter how brief and also making super efficient, you know, with things like compression and delta sync, only sync what's changed, you know, not more features that minimize data sent over the wire, when you do have that precious connectivity. These are efficiencies I think we bring to the table, that kind of help with those problems, but networks, you know, are probably always going to be the challenge with with edge.
Heather Joslyn 21:49
Finally, can you point to any new developments emerging in in the field that you would advise listeners who are concerned about running data on the edge to pay attention to? Sure,
Mark Gamble 21:58
yeah, I think one big development is, you know, I mentioned it earlier alluded to it, it's becoming easier for an organization to adopt. You know, it kind of used to be the hallowed halls of the ivory tower. You know, the biggest, the biggest companies were the biggest IT departments were the only ones who could do this, because you had to build it all yourself. Right? The fact is, even the simplest edge architecture can be extremely complex, especially as the number of edge clients that has served, you know, increase. And it used to be that organization had to adopt edge computing, by setting up and managing their own data centers and procuring hardware and infrastructure and install and integrate the software needed all the pieces together by themselves. And that that's kind of daunting for the inexperienced. But over the past two years or so cloud service providers have begun rolling out edge services, you know, literally cloud infrastructure that customers can deploy to a local Metro datacenter or onto a 5g network, or even on their own premises. So you're probably heard of services like AWS local zone, it was wavelength at this outpost. Azure has its services as well as your public MEK, Google Cloud, GCP, anthos, and extended cloud. Now, these are emerging services that are making edge computing less complex, so that anybody with AWS Azure or GCP expertise can, you know, construct an edge computing environment for their own applications and, and Couchbase is partnering with all of these cloud service providers. And, you know, that I mentioned, you know, we've done latency tests with AWS wavelength 80 of us local zones, and Azure Public MEK, and they, you know, they prove out what we've sort of been saying and what the claims are over an 80% reduction in latency for applications when you leverage Couchbase in these environments, and we've been certified as service ready for AWS outposts. We have more tests underway, in fact, for AWS snow cone, which is their appliance, it's AWS in a box that you can literally put anywhere, and we're doing that with Starlink, low Earth orbit satellite, and just just to test, you know, okay, are these claims of ultra low latency? True, and we always find out that they are, but it's, it's just really validating that, you know, the promises of edge computing, are there combined data processing with these edge services, and you can realize it a lot easier than you may have thought. So yeah, like to encourage folks to, to look into those emerging services, and of course, Couchbase to help get around any of those challenges they may might be assuming, are there.
Heather Joslyn 24:35
Okay. Well, I think that's Thank you very much, Mark, for joining us today. That's a wrap for this episode of makers. Again, thank you, Mark gamble with Couchbase, our guest for this conversation about data in the edge and we'd like to thank Couchbase for sponsoring today's episode of the podcast. I'm Heather Jocelyn of the new stack and I've been your host for today's makers. Thank you all for joining us and we'll see you next time.
Colleen Coll 24:57
Couchbase delivers a high performance A flexible and scalable modern database that runs across the data center and any cloud. Many of the world's largest enterprises rely on Couchbase to power the core applications their businesses depend on.
Alex Williams 25:15
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