Double Down On Innovation With Edge Computing | – Spiceworks News and Insights

Cloud services do not offer enough power for latency-intensive next-gen applications like AI, machine learning, robotics, smart cities, and automated manufacturing. These applications require faster computational speed than allowed in a centralized public cloud location. Edge offers a much faster computational speed with greater reliability and data processing in distributed locations closer to where data is generated, says Steve Grabow, SVP of Lumen Technologies.

The move to the cloud brought an interesting benefit for savvy business leaders: Freedom and focus, allowing them to get in an innovative state of mind. Rather than only operating an IT infrastructure, business innovators found the cloud freed them up to focus on developing innovative new applications.

The cloud also helped businesses double down on innovation. With the cloud, they could make critical applications available to personnel regardless of their location. It helped with cutting costs and consolidating valuable data.

But innovation wont stay only in the cloud alone. The next direction for these innovators to go is to the edge recognizing its the next frontier for innovation. They will move there for speed but garner a range of other benefits. While the cloud remains a great option for hosting many applications and workloads, it may not be the best place for many of todays latency-sensitive, interaction-intensive applications. Heres why.

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic automation, and video analytics require near real-time data processing. We are talking about tremendous amounts of data that must be acquired, analyzed, and acted upon nearly instantly to produce the desired outcome.

This is where edge computing comes into play. Integrating edge computing with cloud computing offers faster data processing for these next-generation applications. Here is why the edge is where its all about.

With edge computing, companies can shorten the physical distance that data needs to travel to reach a public cloud location or on-premises data center, resulting in reduced latency. A large, centralized data center could be hundreds of miles from where data is produced and collected. Edge computing allows businesses to place computing and storage where digital interactions occur. Edge devices can collect, process, and store data in a more distributed fashion than the cloud alone, leading to quicker response times and reduced latency.

There are other benefits to shortening the distance data needs to travel, and that is improved security. Security remains a top priority for global IT decision-makers. 80% are concerned about data security. By physically isolating data, applications, and other resources at the edge, customers can achieve more privacy and security than the cloud. This reduces risk and allows businesses to support industry-specific regulatory or compliance requirements better.

Many edge devices include built-in security capabilities that protect data that lives or transports through devices and out of centralized data centers. As the data lives at the farthest reaches or edge of a companys network, it becomes easier to isolate and protect key data sources allowing autonomous operations to avoid disruption.

The idea behind edge computing is beautifully simple: When you cant get your data closer to your data center, you move your data center closer to your data. Think about it, applications that would power robotics dont have time to travel to the public cloud to get the needed performance. Applications that require high volumes of interactions, like streaming analytics, are subject to costly fees for moving that data in and out of the cloud.

Enter edge data centers, which can facilitate much faster response times. 77% of global IT decision-makers say that only edge computing can solve their latency challenges, and 56% say that their mission-critical applications will require five milliseconds of latency or less in the coming years. Thats because data flow must be seamless and data processing lightning fast to enable things like cashier-less checkout at retail or robotic automation on the manufacturing floor. If a system or application takes too long to respond or put in place an action, the result will be a poor customer experience.

Edge computing can deliver that ultra-low latency and improved reliability. Processing data locally at the edge also reduces the traffic flowing to and from central servers, which can cut those costly data transfer fees and improve overall network performance.

See More: 4 Reasons Why Enterprise Innovation Will Come From the Cloud

Cloud computing and edge computing are distinct but complementary. However, a central cloud often cant provide the performance, low latency, and scale businesses need for their next-generation applications. A more agile, distributed environment that extends the cloud is now necessary.

Edge computing brings a unique combination of local computing and storage with built-in security and unified orchestration. Businesses can still manage applications with similar ease as the cloud but achieve reduced latency and better performance.

This does not mean that the edge replaces the public cloud or data centers. Rather, the edge is an additional place to run workloads when it makes sense and when end users can benefit from more speed.

According to Gartner, enterprise-generated data processed outside a traditional data center or cloud will jump to 75% by 2025. On their own, more than cloud services are needed to manage this growing amount of data. Businesses are grappling with creating better ways of acquiring data, analyzing it for insights, and acting upon it to drive a specific outcome. With edge computing, businesses can bring millions of smaller cloud environments closer to billions of connected devices to do more with their data.

Driving unique digital experiences is how businesses compete and win. And at the heart of those digital experiences is data. Innovators will lead the way to the edge. Future-ready businesses will be prepared at the edge for the data-intensive applications of the 4th Industrial Revolution.

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Double Down On Innovation With Edge Computing | - Spiceworks News and Insights