The Data Center Is Dead, and EDGE Infrastructures Emerge
Traditional Data Centers are getting dead due to Cloud revolution. Enterprises believe deploying data in Cloud is the best way to store and process. However, new methods and techniques are changing the trends. We have observed in the last decade, computing workloads have been migrating from traditional hosting at on-premise data centers to cloud. According to Cisco, the cloud traffic is likely to rise nearly fourfold by 2020, increasing to 14.1 ZB per year by 2020.
Can cloud sustain this traffic?
According to Gartner, 80 percent of enterprises will shut down their traditional data center by 2025, versus 10 percent in the year 2018. Gartner states “Cloud computing has reached the Slope of Enlightenment. The next waves of technologies building on cloud are emerging and climbing to the Peak of Inflated Expectations”.
“edge computing” is a new way to deploy storage and compute resources. This will be definitely useful, when we are dealing with Internet of Things (IoT) or Industry 4.0 revolution. We are not saying that on-premise or cloud centers are dead. Sometimes, data will need to be stored and processed in centralized locations.
But digital infrastructures are certainly changing. Edge computing is a relatively new concept that has been associated with another term, ‘fog computing’.
Why Edge?
Unlike Cloud Computing, which depends on data centers and communication bandwidth to process and analyse data, Edge Computing keeps processing and analysis near the edge of a network, where the data was initially collected.
With edge computing, it is possible to process the data at the edge of the network. Usually it is referred to the processing of data at the user end instead of processing in a local or virtual server or even in the cloud. Cloud computing exactly does in the opposite way. Data management, response, processing data, etc. all happens within the cloud storage.
In case of public cloud, it is quite difficult to know where those resources are located. It might be difficult for the cloud to support real time applications (like IoT, ATM machines, gateway devices, smartphone, etc.) in future.
Some of the advantages of Edge:
1. Reduces Latency: The propagation delay due to the network traffic, request and responses, the amount taken to route data through the networking equipment (switches, routers, firewalls, etc.) can be avoided. Adopting edge computing and locating the processing and storage resources close to the devices would make the response faster.
2. Enhanced Reliability: We often observe data becoming corrupted. In edge technology, there are very rare chances of data corruption. Shortening the network and removing hops through switches improves the reliability of the network. In some cases, the retransmission, packet loss can cause addition delay or loss of data.
3. Enhanced Security: Data computation and processing through own devices lowers the security threats. Edge computing offers the opportunity to provide a more secure environment regardless of how one would deploy at co-location or directly owning the equipment.
Edge is the Future Edge
The vertical segments considered by MarketsandMarkets, Telecom and IT is expected to have the biggest market share during the 2017–2022 forecast period. That’s because enterprises faced with high network load and increasing demand for bandwidth will need to optimise and extend their Radio Access Network (RAN) in order to deliver an efficient Mobile (or Multi-access) Edge Computing (MEC) environment for their apps and services.
MarketsandMarkets reported “Edge Computing Market by Component (Hardware, Platform, Solutions), Application (Smart Cities, Location Services, Analytics, Augmented Reality), Organization Size (SME, Large Enterprises), Vertical, and Region — Global Forecast to 2022”, The edge computing market size is expected to grow to USD 6.72 Billion by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 35.4% during the forecast period.
Grand View Research takes a more conservative view, estimating that the edge computing market will be worth $3.24 billion by 2025, although that’s still a ‘phenomenal’ CAGR of 41.0 percent over the 2017–2025 forecast period. Presence of a high connectivity network in regions such as North America has facilitated the widespread adoption of edge computing solutions. Thus, the North America market is expected to witness substantial growth over the forecast period. Additionally, presence of prominent players such as Cisco Systems, General Electric, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP, International Business Machines (IBM), Microsoft; and SAP SE is anticipated to boost the growth of the regional market.
Conclusion
Edge computing gives the cloud a companion to handle high volume of data generated daily from various connected devices. Processing data closer to where it is generated and needed solves the different challenges. Edge computing accelerates the awareness and response to events by eliminating a round trip to the data centers or virtual servers for analysis. It declines the need for costly bandwidth additions by offloading the network traffic from the core networks.
It also protects sensitive machine data, statistics by analyzing internally than sending outside the data source premises. Ultimately, enterprises that adopt edge computing gain deeper and faster insights, leading to increased business agility, higher service levels, and improved safety.
