Fog vs. Cloud Computing: Is Your Company Investing in the Right Technology?
For the past twenty years or so, cloud computing has made possible much of the tech we take for granted today. While many people tend to associate the cloud with data back-up and online storage, cloud plays a big role in powering the apps we use in everyday business operations - from automated accounting to mobile banking and beyond.
However, cloud may be starting to show its age. Emerging tech, especially that related to the Internet of Things, requires a level of processing ability, network control, analytics and security that the cloud struggles to provide. With IoT gaining importance across the board (it’s estimated that by 2025, there will be 75 billion connected devices worldwide), businesses are showing an increasing amount of interest in fog computing, a decentralised architecture that brings the benefits of the cloud closer to where data is being generated.
With this in mind, should enterprises be making fog architecture their next big tech investment?
Is Fog the New Cloud?
The key to identifying the best solution for your company is understanding the difference between the two, with centralisation the main aspect that sets cloud and fog computing apart. The cloud is highly centralised, with data centres potentially located thousands of kilometres away from the devices they are serving. All data is sent via the Internet to a network of remote servers in order to be processed. The revolutionary aspect of the cloud at the time was that it made data accessible at any time, from any place - any place with a strong Internet connection, that is. When connectivity is poor or the task at hand is time-sensitive (such as telemedicine or autonomous vehicles), the cloud model shows its limits.
Fog architecture, on the other hand, is highly distributed and made up of a multitude of nodes located as close as possible to user devices. Rather than being sent to a remote server, data is collected from local sensors before being transmitted to a local area network (or LAN). Fog is therefore far closer to the end user than cloud and can thus provide a junction between IoT devices (which at this point do not have the necessary resources or capabilities to perform machine learning tasks or analytics) and servers.
The Applications
Whether you chose to invest in cloud or fog computing will largely depend on your use case. Cloud enables enterprises to capture vast quantities of data, which can inform decision-making based on a multiplicity of sources. What’s more, this information can be accessed and analysed remotely by multiple users. Cloud computing is, simply put, a convenient and time-proven set-up for a lot of businesses.
There are however a certain number of disadvantages: as mentioned above, the cloud requires a strong Internet connection, tends to be expensive to run and importantly, is vulnerable to hacks - a major concern when it comes to IoT. Fog, on the other hand, enables the processing, contrasting and interpretation of data from multiple sources at a single location. Fog computing is more efficient compared to cloud when it comes to transmitting large volumes of data, and being decentralised, offers far more in terms of security.
In 2015, the OpenFog Consortium was founded with the aim of providing resources and driving leadership in fog computing, while many companies have already made the switch. Envision, a New York-based renewable energy firm, saw a 15% increase in productivity from its network of wind turbines by reducing data analysis time through fog technology. At the same time, a Palo Alto-based smart city projects is endowing traffic lights with fog computing tech in order to integrate them with connected vehicles, thus easing local congestion.
What Makes Sense for Your Company?
There are several different factors to take into account when choosing what kind of infrastructure to implement. There is no ideal solution that makes sense for every business, and individual enterprises need to carefully examine their needs in order to determine which model will provide the most value.
Truth be told, it’s not simply a question of either/or when it comes to cloud vs. fog. The latter is not here to replace the former, but rather to complement it. Fog can take on short-term analytics work, thus freeing up cloud resources to shoulder heavy duty tasks involving large datasets. It will most likely continue to play a vital role in solving infrastructure challenges related to IoT, but when it comes to analysing dispersed data sources, cloud will probably continue to outperform fog for a number of years to come. At this point, businesses would do well to remain open to the possibilities offered by new architecture models in order to fully benefit from the potential of both technologies.
By Philippe Tschannen
Global Managing Partner