Cloud, Fog and Edge Computing

According to experts, more than 150 billion smart devices will be introduced into the industries by 2025 and this will create a data explosion. The introduction of 5G technology will act as a catalyst towards this explosion.

What could be the possible challenges of this cyber nuclear reaction?

Current Scenario in IIOT-Cloud Computing

The data across various machines and field devices are being collected using different interfacing and gateway solutions and are being sent to private or public clouds. This will help the end users to get free from the over heads in maintaining the cloud server infrastructures or data centers and a lot of money can be saved. In this case the computing activities will take place inside the cloud itself and the result will be sent to the factory level for the final actions (eg: Predictive maintenance, AI based decision making etc.). In this case the data can be accessed from any where in the world and the increasing count of cyber secured devices ultimately increase the security of cloud computing. User need not to worry about the hardware capability for complex computing algorithms since it will take place at the cloud level.

Solution for Time Sensitive Calculation- Fog Computing

The OT segment of most of the industries are with a low band width internet connection and more over they might be placed in locations which are too remote. This scenario will pose challenges in applications in which the data collection, computing and feed back activities are to be performed in short cycles. There arises the importance of fog computing which deals with the critical time sensitive computing actions within the local data source network itself. This will avoid the band width and latency issues being generated from the unprecedented volumes of data

More distributed computing framework- Edge Computing

Here the data is processed and analyzed closer to the point where it is created. This proximity to data at its source can deliver strong and same business benefits of fog computing and increased availability of the system because of the more distributed structure.

In fact the terms edge and fog computing are often used synonymously and are also very similar. Both approaches focus on the idea of shifting computing power from the cloud to the data source

However in both the cases of fog and edge computing, a global analysis and further processing of the data continues to take place in the higher-level cloud system.

The Conclusion

The edge or fog computing cannot replace cloud computing instead they will support cloud computing by reducing unnecessary loads and latency inside the cloud network.

However, an effective edge computing model should address network security risks and management complexities with the following benefits

??Will manage your workloads across all clouds and on any number of devices

??Maintain openness and scalability for deploying any kind of applications

??Should be secure against evolving challenges