Enable the Edge to #FindYourEdge

The Race to the Edge

If the Digital Future is defined by "the fast eat the slow" paradigm, bringing intelligence as close as possible to business events becomes a competitive advantage.

Applications like self-driven cars and trucks, smart security cameras with image recognition and automated alerts, advanced machinery and engines equipped with predictive analytic and telemetry monitoring in real-time, anything that demands precise computation and near real-time decisions, will not work with a centralized processing model like we have been implementing over the last decades.

"Smart Anything": Smart Cities, Smart Grids, Smart Manufacturing, a whole wave of digital transformation brought by the Internet of Things, will require real time intelligence applied to their signals, sensors and instruments.

That's why IT needs to go to the edge of the business.

IT needs to become able to build and maintain infrastructure where IT was never designed to be deployed until now.

IT needs to start implementing and operating Compute, Storage and Connectivity outside the Data Center, and beyond Cloud Services Providers as well. The Edge is the new frontier.

Pause for a second and think about all you read over the recent years in terms of trends in IT. It has been all about the death of Data Centers, allegedly obsolete "computer rooms" that were destined to be replaced by these external services offered by Cloud Services Providers, from centralized locations where the magnitude of consolidation exceeded imagination, right?

Well, think again... Data Centers are not only still around, but when we see the trend for the growing need of distributed resources, Data Centers will probably multiply because of the growth of Edge Computing. They will evolve into different footprints and degrees of automation, but we will definitely need more "compute rooms" in a distributed infrastructure world.

The opportunity at the Edge inspired this interesting paper written by Peter Levine at Andreessen-Horowitz: "The End Of Cloud Computing". Even though the title is a little too drastic, it brings a good discussion on how Edge Computing will shape IT and transform businesses in the near future. From the essay:

"I know we hear a lot about drones, robots, and all the Internet of Things objects that will be created over the next 10 years. A self-driving car is effectively a data center on wheels, a drone is a data center with wings, a robot is a data center with arms and legs, a boat is a floating data center, and it goes on and on.  

These devices are collecting vast amounts of information, and that information needs to be processed in real time. There isn’t the time for that information to go back to the central cloud and get processed in the same way that a Google search gets processed in the cloud right now. This shift is going to obviate cloud computing as we know it."

As I commented, the headlines are exaggerated. The Cloud will not die, just like Data Centers won't either. However we will see IT become more and more hybrid and distributed. Not only from a Hybrid Cloud point of view, making on-premises and off-premises infrastructure work together, but we will see applications spanning multiple venues and data flowing across the Edge, the Core and the Cloud.

One final comment about the definition of the Edge: it's not just about the location. The frontier between the Core and the Edge is not only the proximity or distance of business events that need to be processed faster. The Edge can also be viewed by the existing constraints of management and operations point of view.

Traditionally, Data Centers concentrate IT professionals that run and operate the infrastructure, with easy access for maintenance of components, upgrades and parts replacement.

In a very simple way, the Edge can also be viewed as a site where you need IT resources and you don't have enough of the traditional IT staff. You need server-class compute, advanced storage and protection, operations to deploy and manage high value applications, and IT administrators will not be conveniently around. As a result, the Edge requires solutions that are resilient and designed for minimal hands on operations, in addition to the eventual needs for special hardware to support extreme conditions.

Maybe this aspect makes the Edge adoption even more challenging for most organizations. Scaling operations, designing new processes, adopting new concepts in IT operations is usually more challenging that implementing new technologies. It's the Day 2 challenge versus Day 1 challenge playing here.

#FindYourEdge

With these emerging needs in mind, Dell Technologies recently announced new Edge Computing solutions to help bring IT to the point of data creation and real-time processing.

• PowerEdge XE2420 server
• Modular Data Center Micro 415
• Dell EMC Streaming Data Platform

The new PowerEdge XE Servers are purpose-built for harsh environments and complex, compute-intensive workloads, that require high performance and large storage. These robust servers deliver the reliability and security for demanding applications inside traditional data centers or in extreme conditions, stretching from outside the data center to the edge of the IT infrastructure.

The Modular Data Center Micro 4-Series extend IT deployment in edge/non-datacenter locations with an enclosure that supports up to 17U of compute and storage. It offers pre-integrated, enterprise-level data center IT, power, cooling and remote management in a size shorter and narrower than a parking spot.

The Dell EMC Streaming Data Platform is a software platform that creates an unified stream from both historical and real-time data. The autoscaling ingestion engine utilizes two-tier storage to analyze real-time data while recalling historical data. SDP is built on Pravega, an open source project for streaming I/O, and is packaged to run on Kubernetes infrastructure.

These new solutions extend the broad portfolio of Dell Technologies systems designed for extreme conditions. Dell Rugged devices can support users under extreme conditions, moving intelligence and automation where no other smart device would safely go.

IT Leader: The World Is Yours

With the expected growth of Edge Computing in mind, Peter Levine also writes about the future of IT on his essay:

"The entire world becomes the domain of IT. For those of you who think that your job as CIOs or IT managers has gotten easier, this will be an opportunity of a lifetime. You move from five billion devices to a trillion devices that all need to be managed and coordinated together. Every industry will be subject to this. If I’m in the insurance industry and I run a fleet of drones to inspect houses, who’s going to manage them? There will be so many applications that will combine what we think as consumer-oriented applications with enterprise manageability".

"May you live in interesting times", an old Chinese curse that just came to my mind...

Does your business need IT solutions implemented outside your Data Centers?

Are you interested in learning how to design an enterprise-scale IoT architecture?

Are you building or supporting smart devices that are like Data Center on wheels, on wings, or floating across the oceans and need infrastructure you can trust?

Do you want to discuss how technology is transforming your industry, enabling new business models and products that are powered by these new digital capabilities?

Talk to your Dell Technologies representative and book a visit to one of our Executive Briefing Centers to meet with our leaders and experts. You will have a fully tailored experience, prepared for your needs, aligned to your goals.

Also, follow #FindYourEdge on Twitter to engage with Dell Technologies experts on Social Media.