GCC Tax Theatre | Technology | Edge computing - Is the future of computing reversing from cloud to edge?

With many patents and citations to his credit, Dr. Karim Arabi, is a renowned google scholar, whose work on emergent technologies leads the way for human race. He defines edge computing broadly as all computing outside the cloud happening at the edge of the network, and more specifically in applications where real-time processing of data is required. In other words, cloud computing operates on big data, while edge computing operates on "instant data" that is generated on real-time basis by sensors or users.

In recent years, computing workloads have been migrating: first from on-premises data centres to the cloud and now, increasingly, from cloud data centres to ‘edge’ locations where they are nearer to the source of data being processed. The objective is to boost the performance and reliability of apps and services, and reduce cost of running them, by shortening the distance data has to travel, thereby mitigating bandwidth and latency* issues. That’s not to say that on-premises or cloud centres are dead—some data will always need to be stored and processed in centralised locations. But digital infrastructures are certainly changing. According to Gartner, for example, 80 percent of enterprises will have shut down their traditional data centre by 2025, versus 10 percent in 2018.

Some of the business cases, where Edge Computing will dominate are as follows:

1. Industrial automation

Enabling machines to sense, detect, and learn things without having to be programmed. For example, if sun shining through a window hits a machine for part of the day, the machine will eventually be able to tell that the temperature change doesn't mean that something is wrong.

2. Retail

Retail chains, around the world are creating more immersive in-store environments with technologies like Augmented Reality to attract increased shopper footprint. This requires lower latency, which is where edge computing capabilities are needed.

3. Real estate

"Alexa, Turn on all the lights... Alexa, Turn off all the lights... Make my kitchen brighter... Dim the lights... Brighten the lights in the living room to 75%... Make my lights warmer... Make my lights cooler/warmer/green/ set the lights to Relax... etc, etc, etc."

Right now those tasks tend to take a few seconds to occur. With edge computing, it will be possible for them to happen in near real-time.

4. Predictive maintenance

Alerts for what's happening with a machine are best done close to that machine. For example, if due to rise of water content in the operating atmosphere is beginning to affect a mechanism, the machine will eventually be able to tell that automatically.

5. Augmented and virtual reality

AR and VR tools that are used for employee training need to understand the environment around them. You can push that up to the cloud, but it's a very localized thing to be able to do that. And so it's a high-end computing piece, done very, very close to the edge.

6. Blockchain

You need to be able to locally process distributed ledgers as well as house them locally. Each node in a blockchain is a compute unit, which means blockchain is not a centralized ledger, it's a distributed ledger. Therefore it is Edge Computing.

7. Fog computing

Fog computing is an architecture that uses edge devices to connect to a distributed computing model. Distributed computing systems are able to harness underused cycles across the edge and the continuum to the cloud.

*Terminology:

Latency: Time it takes for data to be transferred between its original source and its destination, measured in milliseconds. Internet latency and network latency affect satellite internet connections, cable internet connections, as well as some WiFi connections.

Sources:

1. https://www.zdnet.com/
2. https://www.techrepublic.com/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/