Oh no. Is this even a concept or some ‘edgy’ buzzword?
Oh no – Edge Computing is real.
Think of Edge Computing as optimizing data processing at the edge of the Cloud network near its data source, rather than in a data center.
Today about ‘10% of enterprise-generated data is created and processed outside a traditional centralized data center or cloud. By 2025, Garnet predicts this figure will reach 75%’.*
Is Edge Computing worth it?
One needs to consider what Edge Computing could be used for. With the proliferation of centralized Cloud Computing, latency has become a factor. With decentralized computing, efficiency with real-time processing and decision-making is available. Can you imagine a self-driving car that needs to wait for a response from a data center?
The concept with Edge Computing is that latency may not be acceptable for applications, therefore more has to occur locally rather than enduring the latency necessary to communicate to a centralized point and receive a response.
As part of Edge Computing, the local component needs the capability to compute, analyze, and store in order to decide what data to filter and send to systems in the Cloud rather than transmitting large amounts of data through the Network.
How is this accomplished? APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) transform the data it receives into functionality. APIs connect the user and their IoT data to the actual application. This is a space where there’s money to be made. Both for businesses AND software vendors even if the end user is not directly accessing the licensed program, a license may be required for use of that vendor’s intellectual property (** please refer to Miro’s previous blog post regarding licensing and APIs at https://miroconsulting.com/blog/oracle-license-compliance-issues-related-to-api-usage/ **)
Many industries have already discovered the benefits of Edge Computing to monitor and/or take action:
- Remote mining equipment
- Air quality sensors
- Water quality and leak detection
- Location and health-monitoring of livestock
- Off-shore drilling rigs
- Inventory optimization
- Logistics for package delivery
- Target Advertising
- Traffic congestion issues
- Disaster relief
*van der Meulen, Rob. (2018, October 3). What Edge Computing Means for Infrastructure and Operations Leaders. Retrieved from https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-edge-computing-means-for-infrastructure-and-operations-leaders/
About Miro:
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