IOT, Edge Computing & Cloud the 3 pieces of a puzzle

Based on the current market pulse, IOT, Edge computing and Cloud combined is a massive disruptor as it is challenging the current norm in the industry which is to centralize everything in the cloud.

Over the past 10 years when every company has been consolidating and centralizing data centers and moving them into Public and private cloud. Now there is this new force which is making us think about Local, Edge & Edge intelligence.

The 2 following business examples will shed some light on the specific need so that new technology solutions can be built in the market place.

1. An oil rig in the ocean that has 1000s of sensors producing large amounts of data. Most of it could be not relevant as it could be machine related chatter. Do you move all this data to the centralized cloud through a fat pipe or do intelligent parsing, ingesting at the Edge (locally) before moving relevant data to the cloud. It is the latter.
2. With 5G technology, telecom companies are building "Micro data centers" at the edge which will be used by business customers for "local" computational and intelligence before moving them to a centralized cloud. Pretty much all activities from the mobile devices fall under this category for effective data ingestion.

Another Key statistics: The number of IOT devices by 2020 is going to be over 8.4 Billion. So with expanding devices churning out Data in Zeta bytes, it will be difficult and inefficient to have one centralized intelligence in the cloud and hence the best approach is to handle some of it real time locally before transferring key content and intel back to the cloud.

Also the security aspects in the IOT devices are in infancy making it difficult to manage. A local edge based capability can very much mange, control and direct it there by enabling the next gen business model.

When looking at an IOT platform you look for

1. End to end solution building capabilities
2. Expansion
3. Connectivity
4. Cloud Capability
5. Security
6. Data management

So selecting the best Internet of Things platform depends on the requirements of a company for hardware, real-time access, custom reports, budget, development skills, and the business model. Security at all levels.

Current Market Place & Best IOT platforms from the latest 2019 report :

• Google Cloud
• Particle
• Sales Force IOT
• Thingworx
• IBM Watson IOT
• Amazon AWS IOT Core
• Azure IOT Suite

My final point being, decide, design and operationalize an IOT architecture solution that provides low latency with Edge capabilities and end to end business results for your organization with the least technology sprawl.

Thank you

Ramana Swami