Name: Intel and Affirmed Networks: The Journey towards Cloud Native Network Functions
Start: 2016-12-14T17:00:00Z
End: 2016-12-14T17:00:48.000Z
Location: BrightTALK
Rating: 4.67

Intel® Industry Solution Builders program has a mission to help communication service providers and enterprises accelerate their development and implementation time by gathering a global ecosystem to provide flexible, scalable, virtualized, and cloud native solutions for cloud, core, and edge computing. The Intel® Industry Solution Builders Builders webinar program is a recurring webcast series in which ecosystem members and Intel technology experts delve into the technologies, topics, and issues facing the edge and networking industry. Ecosystem partners with commercialized solutions based on Intel architecture benefit from an array of marketing opportunities to amplify their offerings into market and accelerate adoption.

Retail and QSR industries are entering a new era of intelligent automation. Rapid adoption of AI-enabled edge computing, cashier-less stores, smart signage, and voice/vision AI is reshaping customer expectations. Yet, businesses still face critical challenges: limited customer insights, slow service, order errors, and labor shortages.

Advantech delivers AI-powered edge solutions that turn these challenges into opportunities. Self-service kiosks, automated checkout, and voice ordering streamline operations, accelerate service, and ensure transaction accuracy. AI-driven inventory and recommendation systems provide real-time insights, personalized customer experiences, and upselling opportunities. Compact, modular, and thermally optimized systems guarantee reliable performance across diverse environments while reducing dependence on high-turnover staff.

With Advantech, retailers and QSR operators can eliminate data blind spots, enhance operational efficiency, and deliver frictionless, personalized experiences. By combining real-time analytics, automation, and intelligent design, Advantech empowers businesses to thrive in a competitive, digital-first market—transforming the way customers engage, purchase, and interact.

AI-Powered Retail: From Insight to Action

As the digital display market continues to evolve, organizations are under pressure to deliver more intelligent, connected, and secure experiences — all while optimizing performance, cost, and sustainability. In this session, industry experts explore the shifting landscape of digital signage and embedded solutions, highlighting the key trends shaping the market and how leading providers are adapting to meet new demands.

We’ll take a closer look at the challenges integrators and end users face today — from fragmented ecosystems to the need for scalable, future-proof hardware that supports analytics and AI-driven insights.

Discover how the partnership between Bluefin and Intel delivers what customers need now and is designed to evolve with what’s next. Together, we’re enabling performance, reliability, and flexibility that empower organizations to scale confidently into the future of digital engagement.

From Edge to Experience: The Future of Connected Bluefin Displays

Join us for an exclusive session showcasing how Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions and Intel are transforming retail with future-ready, innovative solutions. 

From point-of-sale to self-checkout, mobility, and AI-driven solutions, discover how Toshiba's integrated hardware, software, and services empower retailers across all segments—specialty, grocery, hospitality, and convenience—to thrive in a rapidly evolving market. 

Learn how Toshiba’s comprehensive portfolio – including the TCx® 620 – powered by Intel, delivers performance, efficiency, and scalability for today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities. 

Following this event, meet us in person at NRF 2026 Jan. 11-13 booth #3623 to explore how we can help you innovate, optimize operations, and elevate customer experiences.

Powering Retail Operations: Innovative Solutions with Toshiba & Intel®

Retailers today face mounting pressure from labor shortages, shrink, and tight margins—while shoppers expect fast, seamless, and personalized experiences. Traditional self-checkout often falls short, leading to slow transactions, scanning errors, and increased staff intervention.

Join Partner Tech and Intel for a live webinar exploring how AI is revolutionizing self-checkout. See firsthand how Partner Tech’s AI-powered SCO solutions use computer vision, self-learning scales, and anomaly detection to reduce shrink, speed up transactions, and improve the customer experience.
Built on Intel® Core™, these solutions combine high-performance edge computing with secure cloud analytics, enabling real-time insights, reliable performance, and enterprise-grade manageability.

We’ll highlight practical ways AI helps retailers overcome today’s challenges—enhancing efficiency, protecting profitability, and creating frictionless experiences that keep customers coming back. Experience the future of retail checkout and discover how technology transforms every transaction into a moment of trust and connection.

The Future of Retail Self-Checkout: Smart. Seamless. AI-Driven.

The medical imaging market is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by the rapid integration of AI into diagnostic devices. Ultrasound and X-ray systems increasingly demand higher performance, lower latency, and enhanced energy efficiency in order to deliver real-time image processing, AI-assisted diagnostics, and mobile point-of-care operation.

At the same time, manufacturers face pervasive challenges:
• Rising complexity of integrating CPU, GPU, and AI accelerators.
• Need for compact, energy-efficient designs for portable diagnostic devices.
• Long product life cycles with strict regulatory and certification requirements.

congatec addresses these pain points with its COM Express Type 6 conga-TC750 and COM-HPC Client modules, powered by Intel® Core™ Ultra processors (Series 2). These modules combine heterogeneous compute (CPU + GPU + NPU) in a compact footprint, delivering up to 99 TOPS AI performance while minimizing thermal output. The result is a scalable, field-upgradable platform that enables AI-enhanced ultrasound and X-ray machines with superior efficiency and reliability.

Developers benefit from congatec’s aReady software stack with built-in virtualization, security (OPNsense firewall), and AI toolkits such as Intel® OpenVINO™. This reduces time-to-market and allows faster deployment of AI-enabled medical imaging solutions.

This session will first explore the market landscape of AI in medical imaging, highlighting industry pain points and competitive trends. It will then dive into the technical capabilities of congatec’s COM modules, showing how Intel’s heterogeneous compute architecture (CPU, GPU, NPU) is leveraged for real-world medical imaging workloads. Finally, the session will present deployment insights and success stories from OEM adoption in medical devices, underlining how congatec empowers innovation in healthcare diagnostics.

AI-Powered Medical Imaging with congatec Computing Modules and Intel Core Ultra®

Enterprises are shifting intelligence to the edge, where responsiveness, efficiency, and security are critical. Relying on the cloud for AI processing introduces latency, higher costs, and privacy concerns. What’s needed is a compact, affordable edge platform that can deliver secure networking while also running AI workloads locally.
 
In this Tech Talk, Silicom and Intel will present the Silicom Ibiza 1U Universal CPE, powered by the Intel Atom® x7000 processor series and enhanced with Intel® NetSec software. Designed for the edge, Ibiza consolidates networking and security into a single cost-efficient device. Silicom and Intel validated both CPU-only benchmarks and cases where AI workloads such as malware and URL detection were offloaded to the integrated GPU. On the CPU, Intel® AVX2 instructions enhance performance for vectorized and cryptographic workloads. When inference tasks are offloaded to the integrated GPU, CPU resources are freed to focus on high-throughput networking and security functions. Together, these approaches demonstrate the flexibility to optimize performance and cost depending on deployment needs—while eliminating reliance on the cloud or discrete GPUs.
 
Attendees will gain insights into:
• Market drivers behind the convergence of AI, networking, and security at the edge.
• How Intel NetSec software and Intel Atom processors were used to optimize AI and networking workloads.
• Benchmark results demonstrating low-latency AI inference alongside high-throughput networking performance.
• Broader enterprise, telco, and retail use cases where a cost-efficient edge appliance reduces TCO and strengthens resilience.
 
Join Silicom and Intel to see how AI-enabled edge solutions are transforming network appliances into intelligent, secure platforms—bringing both performance and protection closer to where it matters most.

AI-Enabled Edge Networking and Security

UP Bridge the Gap, a brand established by AAEON Technology Europe B.V., proudly celebrates its 10th anniversary with a renewed focus on Artificial Intelligence, positioning itself at the forefront of cutting-edge trends and technologies.

Starting an AI project from scratch has never been easier.

Are you wondering:

-Is my current platform suitable for AI?
-Should I add an AI module to enhance performance—and if so, which one best fits my use case?
-What camera should I integrate?
-Which software tools can help evaluate performance and streamline development?
-Is there a solution that can accelerate development and reduce time to market?

UP Bridge the Gap provides answers to these questions through its established and expanding AI Ecosystem—offering validated solutions that simplify AI development and enable the creation of high-performance, robust AI applications.

UP AI Ecosystem can help accelerate Your AI Project

Enterprises today want powerful AI capabilities—but face challenges with costly infrastructure, vendor lock-in, and compliance risks. Large language models (LLMs) often require expensive GPUs and cloud services, raising concerns about data privacy, security, and control.

Join Intel and Arcee AI to explore Arcee Foundation Models (AFM)—a family of small, efficient language models delivering state-of-the-art AI quality on Intel Xeon CPUs. AFM provides comparable performance to much larger models while significantly lowering hosting costs and infrastructure complexity.

Designed for enterprises that demand cost-efficiency, privacy, security, and regulatory compliance, AFM offers full transparency with open weights and architecture, eliminating vendor lock-in. This allows organizations to deploy AI on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments, maintaining full ownership of their infrastructure and data.

In this session, you’ll learn how AFM helps decision makers to:

• Achieve state-of-the-art AI performance optimized for Intel Xeon CPUs
• Reduce the total cost of ownership by avoiding expensive GPU requirements
• Maintain data privacy, compliance, and sovereignty for regulated environments
• Leverage an open, transparent foundation model for maximum control
• Accelerate deployment with AFM’s domain adaptation for industry-specific solutions

Whether you’re leading digital innovation, IT strategy, or compliance, this webinar will provide actionable insights on deploying secure, high-quality, and affordable AI at scale.

Discover how Arcee Foundation Models on Intel Xeon empower your enterprise to adopt next-generation AI—small in size, big on impact, fully under your control.

Open, Private, Cost-Effective AI: Arcee.ai Foundation Models on Intel Xeon

APIs now form the connective tissue of digital transformation—but they’ve also become one of the most exploited attack surfaces.

In this exclusive Tech Talk, discover how Prophaze, in partnership with Intel®, is redefining modern API security by merging behavioral threat detection with Intel®’s processor-level acceleration, enabling faster anomaly detection, reduced false positives, and seamless protection across cloud-native workloads.

This session will explore key performance and security enhancements, designed to help DevSecOps teams, security leaders, and architects scale zero-trust defenses without compromising agility.

Key Highlights:
• Closes observability gaps in east-west and north-south API traffic
• Mitigates advanced threats like BOLA, credential stuffing, and bot-driven logic abuse in real time
• Empowers DevSecOps teams with inline defenses that adapt at cloud speed—without breaking developer velocity

This isn’t just about stopping attacks—it’s about reshaping how modern API ecosystems defend themselves from within.

Harnessing Intel® Processor Innovations for Advanced API Security

Join Hummingbirds AI CEO for a transformative session on how edge-based authentication is reshaping security while creating unprecedented business opportunities for Intel partners.

The cybersecurity landscape is at a critical inflection point. Despite billions invested in protection, 80% of breaches still involve compromised credentials. Traditional authentication methods force an impossible choice between security and usability, leaving both IT teams and end users frustrated. The result? Weakened security, reduced productivity, and significant hidden costs.

This session introduces Guacamole, a groundbreaking facial authentication solution that leverages Intel's edge AI capabilities to solve the authentication paradox. Unlike cloud-dependent alternatives, Guacamole processes all biometric data locally, delivering continuous, zero-touch authentication without compromising privacy or requiring internet connectivity.

You'll discover:

- How Intel-optimized edge AI creates new security possibilities previously unachievable
- Why continuous authentication represents a $15B+ market opportunity with double-digit growth
- How OEMs and channel partners can differentiate offerings through privacy-first security
- Practical integration strategies for vertical markets including healthcare, finance, and government
- Revenue models that create sustainable business value for the Intel ecosystem

Through live demonstrations and real-world case studies, you'll see how Guacamole delivers up to 8x performance acceleration using Intel's OpenVINO toolkit while eliminating the friction of traditional authentication.

Whether you're developing next-generation hardware, building comprehensive security solutions, or helping clients navigate complex compliance requirements, this session will provide actionable insights for capitalizing on the edge AI authentication revolution.

Edge AI Authentication: Creating New Value in the Security Ecosystem

Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technology, along with the “connected everything” potential of 5G are game changers for enterprises, service providers, and systems integrators in delivering end-to-end IoT solutions. 

Today’s private 5G and edge computing bring significant increases in network coverage, uplink performance, bandwidth, and data processing speed, allowing wirelessly connected HD-video cameras to be placed anywhere and expanding the marketplace for media analytics. Video analytics market size is expected to grow at CAGR of 22.7% to nearly $22 billion by 2027. 

However, the challenge has been in the complexity of integrating media analytics and real time communications into existing and new business applications to help drive business efficiencies. 


The webinar will cover:

1. Live demo of computer vision applications and the low-code/no-code programmable platform that empowers teams to quickly create new enterprise automation applications simply by dragging and dropping instruction on “what to look for” and “action to take” in a real time or recorded audio or video stream – all without requiring any special end point equipment.

2. How OpenVINO based 100+ prebuilt analytics models and integrated programmable communications can help accelerate development of IoT applications. Application possibilities include video surveillance, AR/VR overlay, gunshot and fire detection and alerting emergency services personnel, monitoring retail shelves for inventory management, and many other such services for multiple verticals – Manufacturing, Warehouses, Healthcare, Warehouse, Utilities, and more.

Reducing Complexities to Integrate OpenVINO Audio-Video Analytics in 5G & Edge IoT Applications

As the digital and physical worlds converge at the edge, mission-critical operations demand more than just performance, they require uncompromising security, real-time intelligence, and resilient connectivity. ECS, a trusted systems integrator and edge innovation leader, introduces a new breed of deployable infrastructure that redefines what's possible at the tactical and operational edge.

In this technical fireside chat, ECS unveils a turnkey solution that fuses post-quantum encryption, automated symmetric key orchestration, zero trust architecture, hardware-accelerated network security, AI/ML edge processing, and Private 5G "network-in-a-box" all in a compact, ruggedized system designed for real-world deployment.

Backed by industry leaders:

• Intel provides the compute horsepower and a NetSec accelerator card for line-rate encryption, deep packet inspection, and policy enforcement without compromising performance.
• Zscaler powers Zero Trust access, identity-based segmentation, and secure user-to-app communication across the most hostile environments.
• Arqit delivers military-grade, quantum-safe encryption through scalable, automatic symmetric key distribution future-proofing sensitive data against the quantum threat.
• ECS integrates it all, bridging the gap between innovation and operational deployment.

This webinar explores real-world use cases across defense, critical infrastructure, and regulated industries where the stakes are high, downtime is not an option, and tomorrow’s threats are already here. Learn how ECS and its partners are making secure, intelligent, and autonomous edge systems a reality not in years, but today.

Whether you’re protecting a forward operating base, a power grid, or a decentralized AI-powered logistics network, this is the solution you can trust.

Join us to see what happens when Zero Trust meets Post-Quantum, AI, and 5G at the edge.

Integrated Edge: Post-Quantum, AI, 5G, and Zero Trust in a Box

In late 2023, the Food & Drug Administration issued new considerations for cybersecurity in medical devices. These recommendations cover everything from authentication, to cryptography, to firmware and software updates. Medical device makers are now looking to meet these requirements, while ensuring ongoing operations are scalable.

A common traditional approach employed for deploying firmware and software updates in the field has been utilizing a software agent which has its drawbacks and limitations. A new approach to solving this update challenge is to leverage an edge focused software architecture, such as EVE-OS from the Linux Foundation, and leverage an API for orchestration of the software and underlying hardware.
In this panel, you’ll hear from experts about:

• Foundational security considerations for embedded software running at the edge
• The EVE-OS architecture and how it addresses the new FDA considerations
• Considerations for scaling firmware and software updates


Moderator: 

Andrew Lamkin
Health and Life Sciences Solutions Architect
INTEL

Panelists: 

Kim D. Crawford
VP of Global Sales and Business Development 
Dedicated Computing

Matt Grubis 
Chief Engineer, Monitoring Solutions
GE HealthCare

Erik Nordmark
Co-founder and CTO
ZEDEDA

FDA Cybersecurity in Medical Devices—A New Approach for Deploying Firmware & Software Updates

Join us for an in-depth exploration of the Acumera Reliant Platform, designed to transform how multi-site operators in the retail and hospitality industries manage their edge computing environments. 

This webinar, hosted by Richard Newman, Chief Strategy Officer, and Brian Prokaski, Chief Revenue Officer at Acumera. This webinar will dive into how Acumera’s platform enables seamless management of both legacy systems and modern, container-based applications with AI/ML and IoT integration.

Key takeaways include understanding the platform’s orchestration, configuration management, and observability features and how Intel hardware powers its robust performance. 

Viewers will learn how the platform drives operational efficiency, reduces downtime, and enhances real-time visibility into network performance across thousands of locations. We’ll share real-world success stories, including our deployments in Casey’s gas stations and an industry-leading QSR, where we helped scale edge computing solutions to streamline operations and improve decision-making.

Whether you're involved in retail, QSR, or another multi-site operation, this session will provide actionable insights on how edge computing can drive digital transformation. Plus, we’ll explore how Intel and Acumera can collaborate to bring more optimized and scalable edge solutions to market.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see the future of edge computing in action!

Revolutionize Multi-Site Operations: Acumera Reliant Platform

This presentation provides an in-depth look at two important Linux Foundation projects - SONiC and FD.io - and their complementary roles in modern, open networking.

We will explore the origins of these projects, their evolution, and how they address the demands of high-performance, scalable, and cost-efficient network infrastructure. SONiC has become a standard for open-source network operating systems, while FD.io delivers high-speed, flexible software packet processing with VPP.

Project histories: How SONiC and FD.io originated and matured into their current states, with insights into their architectures and future.

Use-cases: Examples of deploying SONiC and FD.io in scenarios such as data center networking, enterprise connectivity, and telco applications.

FD.io CSIT Project: An overview of the Continuous System Integration and Testing benchmarking framework that drives the reliability, stability, and performance of FD.io.

With a focus on practical applications and technical insights, this presentation demonstrates why SONiC and FD.io offer unique advantages for next-generation software networking solutions - both for appliance and cloud networking form factors.

SONiC ❤️ FD.io: Better Together

Join us for the webinar Unleashing Scalable AI Inference with Wallaroo: Transforming Industries for Intel Architecture, where we explore how Wallaroo.AI, a universal AI inference platform, is enabling businesses to accelerate AI adoption across diverse sectors. Built for efficiency, performance, and scalability, Wallaroo empowers industries such as retail, manufacturing, life sciences, aerospace, and defense to unlock the full potential of AI with seamless deployments across cloud, edge, multi-cloud, and on-prem environments.

Discover how Wallaroo’s production-grade inference platform, optimized for Intel Architecture, integrates with the OpenVINO Toolkit to maximize the capabilities of Intel CPUs and GPUs. Learn how features like autoscaling, resource optimization, and advanced model deployment and monitoring streamline ML/LLM operations and deliver impactful AI use cases like medical imaging in healthcare, safety automation in manufacturing, and satellite imagery analysis in aerospace.

This webinar is an essential opportunity for Intel Solution Builder partners to gain insights into scalable AI solutions that drive digital transformation and enhance competitive advantage.

Unleashing Scalable AI Inference with Wallaroo: Transforming Industries for Intel Architecture

Palo Alto Networks is a leader in security solutions that protect the organizations deploying AI everywhere, generating and processing data everywhere. We are inviting Dr. May Wang, CTO of IoT Security, Palo Alto Networks, to discuss how Palo Alto sees the edge and what strategy Palo Alo is taking from security perspective. 

More data is generated at the edge as devices are smarter and feeding more information into the network. More intelligence is generated at the edge with more values extracted out of data. Organizations are deploying GenAI at the edge to transform user experience at the edge both for external customers and for its employees. More values are placed at the edge that attract attackers. The edge is ever more vulnerable with increased attack surfaces. Intel and Palo Alto Networks have long worked together to deliver security solutions in the hands of IT and OT organizations. 

The recent advancements include building AI-enabled security solutions that could be deployed everywhere, from edge to cloud. Edge in particular is the center of the discussion with May where more data generation, processing, new applications like GenAI, and workloads to protect them all are deployed.

Executive Fireside Chat with Intel and Palo Alto Network - "AI enabled network security at the edge"

We’ll explain root causes for challenges observed by communication service providers (CommSPs) in software architectures while on-boarding typical virtual network functions (VNFs). 

CommSPs are seeking more “Cloud Native” architectures including: 
1. Granular software releases and simplified software upgrades, 
2. Increased scalability
3. Increased resiliency 

Affirmed Networks will give examples of how proper “Cloud Native Ready” architecture supports increased scaling, resiliency and software agility.

Intel and Affirmed Networks: The Journey towards Cloud Native Network Functions

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Intel and Affirmed Networks: The Journey towards Cloud Native Network Functions

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