What’s your edge

 

Mohammed Amin, Senior Vice President – MERAT, at Dell Technologies

 

 

 

Edge computing has been garnering significant attentionand has already started making an

impact on how organizations think about working with data, defying boundaries beyond

the use of data centers. With the recent shifts to virtual operations and remote working,

organizations are being challenged to think of innovative models and infrastructure to cater

to these rising needs.

Concurrently, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital transformation are taking place,

and waves of technology have been shaping and changing the IT world and challenging

how organizations do business. The influx of data is soaring due to the vast adoption and

proliferation of smart devices and growing connectivity.

With 30 billion end points predicated by 2023, edge infrastructure modernization, demands

platforms that can address the stringent services, environmental, power and physical

footprint requirements that IoT solutions demand.  Devices such as phones, drones,

automobiles, smart watches, utility grids and industrial sensors and machines are churning

out large amounts of data, making it increasingly urgent for IT leaders to determine how

and where this data will be processed. Accessing and analyzing of distributed real-time

data is becoming more important to businesses and is driving the need for different

computing strategies and processing systems that complement larger data centers located

far away.

Gartner predicts that by 2022, as a result of digital business projects, 75% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the traditional, centralized data center or cloud – an increase from the less than 10% generated today.

Businesses need to have consistent, flexible infrastructure to quickly adapt to these shifts.With the ability ofedgecomputing to capture data created near the source and the advancement of analytics applications, new business models are emergingaltering the way organizations think about their technology assets. The edge computing industry itself is predicted to be worth $28.8 billion by 2025, according to a report by Grand View Research released this month.

Alongside this, the parallel advent of emerging technologies is driving the adoption of edge computing, enabling a transition from data centers to smaller distributed centers at the edge. 5G, IoT, and AI are converging and creating new paradigms about data on the edge that will influence both the public and private sectors.The vast adoption of IoT and 5Gis expected to grow significantly in the region, and edge computing can be an asset by reducing latency and enabling real-time analytics, fully utilizing the potential of these technologies. Additionally, the combination of AI and edge computing can help foster innovation, improve operations, and enhance customer experiences with close to real-time automation.

At its core, edge computing processes data close to the source of where it is generated, proving valuable for increasing use cases of analytics and machine learning.What makes this exciting is seeing how businesses will be leveraging these converging technologies, as they have transformative potential for many industries and areas.

For instance, in retail the benefits could range from facial recognition for personalized advertising, to AI-powered surveillance for security and retail shrinkage prevention.In the manufacturing industry, it can boost productionby speeding up automated quality assurance

checks, and addressing limitations across areas such as predictive maintenance, automated

process management and supply chain visibility. Looking at healthcare, remote surgeries

and telemedicine could be facilitated more seamlessly and for smart cities, there can

numerous benefits from faster autonomous vehicle support to smart traffic management.

Additionally, the benefits of reduced latency, improved throughput, better security, and

isolation, coupled with data reduction and context and location awareness make edge

computing a compelling area of infrastructure investment for communication service

providers (CSPs).

Businesses need to start planning on incorporating edge computing into their roadmaps to

be ready for this coming wave. The role of the CIO is constantly evolving to match the fast pace of change in the IT industry, and CIOs should acknowledge that there should be room

for learning and risk involved. While edge computing has the potential to transform

enterprises, CIOs should examinethe particular business needs and goals it can help them

achieve. When to invest in edge and where it fits in the larger data management and cloud

strategies are common questions.

Rather than seeing edge computing as an ultimate choice, a mixed or hybrid approach

could work better, by incorporating the different emerging technologies in innovative ways.

Identifying wherelocalized computing power is necessaryfor real-time insights, rapid data

processing and reduced latency,is valuable for businesses to recognize. Investment in the

right areas will allow for increased efficiencies, reduced costs in moving around data, and

flexibility to handle future AI demands and latency-sensitive applications. It is certain that

edge computing will have an increasing role to play as more things in the world are

digitized, and could be actually be the key to maximizing the success of intelligent

connectivity