6 Design Principles for Edge Computing Systems

Edge computing is defined by a wide diversity of use cases.

To illustrate, the 2025 Open Source Summit brought together two edge experts with experience in two vastly different types of edge systems to explain some rules they’ve learned for building an edge computing system.

One was from Chick-fil-A, a popular chicken sandwich chain, which runs a Kubernetes-based edge computing platform for its 3,000+ outlets across the U.S. The other expert was from the U.S. Air Force, which has among its other duties delivering connectivity and associated…