What is “Edge Computing”?

The ‘Edge’ refers to having computing infrastructure closer to the source of data. It is the distributed framework where data is processed as close to the originating data source possible. This infrastructure requires effective use of resources that may not be continuously connected to a network such as laptops, smartphones, tablets, and sensors. Edge Computing covers a wide range of technologies including wireless sensor networks, cooperative distributed peer-to-peer ad-hoc networking and processing, also classifiable as local cloud/fog computing, mobile edge computing, distributed data storage and retrieval, autonomic self-healing networks, remote cloud services, augmented reality, and more.

The goal of Edge Computing is to minimize the latency by bringing the public cloud capabilities to the edge. This can be achieved in two forms — custom software stack emulating the cloud services running on existing hardware, and the public cloud seamlessly extended to multiple point-of-presence locations.

Top 5 Benefits of Edge Computing

1. Speed and Latency

The longer it takes to process data, the less relevant it is. In the case of the autonomous vehicle, time is of the essence and most of the data it collects and requires is useless after a couple of seconds. Milliseconds matter, especially on a busy roadway. Milliseconds also matter in the digital factory where intelligence based systems perpetually monitor all aspects of the manufacturing process to ensure data consistency. In many cases, there isn’t time to round trip data back and forth between the cloud. Situations such as equipment failures and hazardous incidents call for the instantaneous analysis of data. Confining data analysis to the edge where it is created eliminates latency, which translates into faster response times. This makes your data more relevant, useful and actionable. Edge computing also reduces the overall traffic loads of your enterprise at large, which improves performance for all of your enterprise applications and services.

2. Security

When all of your data must eventually feed to its cloud analyser through a single pipe, the critical business and operating processes that rely on actionable data are highly vulnerable. As a result, a single DDoS attack can disrupt entire operations for a multinational company. When you distribute your data analysis tools across the enterprises, you distribute the risk as well. While it can be argued that edge computing expands the potential attack surface for would-be hackers, it also diminishes the impact on the organization as a whole. Another inherent truth is that when you transfer less data, there is less data that can be intercepted. The proliferation of mobile computing has made enterprises much more vulnerable because company devices are now transported outside of the protected firewall perimeter of the enterprise. When data is analysed locally, it remains protected by the security blanket of the on premise enterprise. Edge computing also helps companies overcome the issues of local compliance and privacy regulations as well as the issue of data sovereignty.

3. Cost Savings

Since all data is not the same and does not contain the same value, how does one justify spending the same amount of money on all of it when it comes to transporting, managing, and securing it? While some data is critical to your operations, some is nearly expendable. Edge computing allows you to categorize your data from a management perspective. By retaining as much data within your edge locations, you reduce the need for costly bandwidth to connect all of your locations, and bandwidth translates directly into dollars. Edge computing isn’t about eliminating the need for the cloud, it is about optimizing the flow of your data in order to maximize your operating costs. Edge computing also helps to reduce some level of data redundancy. Data that is created at the edge must be stored there at least temporarily. When sent to the cloud, it must be stored again, creating levels of redundancy. When you reduce redundant storage, you reduce redundant cost.

4. Greater Reliability

The world of IoT includes some pretty remote territories comprised of rural and less than optimal environments concerning internet connectivity. When edge devices can locally store and process ensuing data, it improves reliability. Prefabricated micro data centres are built today to operate within just about any environment. This means that temporary disruptions in intermittent connectivity will not impact smart device operations just because they lost connection to the cloud. In addition, every site has some built-in limitation to the amount of data that can be transmitted at one time. Although your bandwidth demands may not be tested as of yet, the exponential growth in generated data will push bandwidth infrastructure to the limit in the future for many enterprises.

5. Scalability

Although the idea that edge computing offers an advantage of scalability may seem contrary to promoted theory, it actually makes sense. Even for cloud computing architectures, data must first be forwarded to a centrally located datacentre in most cases. Expanding or even just modifying dedicated datacenters is an expensive proposition. What’s more, IoT devices can be deployed along with their processing and data management tools at the edge in a single implantation, rather than waiting on the coordination of efforts from personnel located at multiple sites.

Some examples of Edge Computing

1. Autonomous vehicles

Autonomous platooning of truck convoys will likely be one of the first use cases for autonomous vehicles. Here, a group of truck travel close behind one another in a convoy, saving fuel costs and decreasing congestion. With edge computing, it will be possible to remove the need for drivers in all trucks except the front one, because the trucks will be able to communicate with each other with ultra-low latency.

2. Remote monitoring of assets in the oil and gas industry

Oil and gas failures can be disastrous. Their assets therefore need to be carefully monitored.

However, oil and gas plants are often in remote locations. Edge computing enables real-time analytics with processing much closer to the asset, meaning there is less reliance on good quality connectivity to a centralised cloud.

3. Smart grid

Edge computing will be a core technology in more widespread adoption of smart grids and can help allow enterprises to better manage their energy consumption.

Sensors and IoT devices connected to an edge platform in factories, plants and offices are being used to monitor energy use and analyse their consumption in real-time. With real-time visibility, enterprises and energy companies can strike new deals, for example where high-powered machinery is run during off-peak times for electricity demand. This can increase the amount of green energy (like wind power) an enterprise consumes.

4. Predictive maintenance

Manufacturers want to be able to analyse and detect changes in their production lines before a failure occurs.

Edge computing helps by bringing the processing and storage of data closer to the equipment. This enables IoT sensors to monitor machine health with low latencies and perform analytics in real-time.

5. In-hospital patient monitoring

Healthcare contains several edge opportunities. Currently, monitoring devices (e.g. glucose monitors, health tools and other sensors) are either not connected, or where they are, large amounts of unprocessed data from devices would need to be stored on a 3rd party cloud. This presents security concerns for healthcare providers.

An edge on the hospital site could process data locally to maintain data privacy. Edge also enables right-time notifications to practitioners of unusual patient trends or behaviours (through analytics/AI), and creation of 360-degree view patient dashboards for full visibility.

6. Virtualised radio networks and 5G (vRAN)

Operators are increasingly looking to virtualise parts of their mobile networks (vRAN). This has both cost and flexibility benefits. The new virtualised RAN hardware needs to do complex processing with a low latency. Operators will therefore need edge servers to support virtualising their RAN close to the cell tower.

7. Cloud gaming

Cloud gaming, a new kind of gaming which streams a live feed of the game directly to devices, (the game itself is processed and hosted in data centres) is highly dependent on latency.

Cloud gaming companies are looking to build edge servers as close to gamers as possible in order to reduce latency and provide a fully responsive and immersive gaming experience.

8. Content delivery

By caching content – e.g. music, video stream, web pages – at the edge, improvements to content deliver can be greatly improved. Latency can be reduced significantly. Content providers are looking to distribute CDNs even more widely to the edge, thus guaranteeing flexibility and customisation on the network depending on user traffic demands.

9. Traffic management

Edge computing can enable more effective city traffic management. Examples of this include optimising bus frequency given fluctuations in demand, managing the opening and closing of extra lanes, and, in future, managing autonomous car flows.

With edge computing, there is no need to transport large volumes of traffic data to the centralised cloud, thus reducing the cost of bandwidth and latency.

10. Smart homes

Smart homes rely on IoT devices collecting and processing data from around the house. Often this data is sent to a centralised remote server, where it is processed and stored. However, this existing architecture has problems around backhaul cost, latency, and security.

By using edge compute and bringing the processing and storage closer to the smart home, backhaul and roundtrip time is reduced, and sensitive information can be processed at the edge. As an example, the time taken for voice-based assistant devices such as Amazon’s Alexa to respond would be much faster.

Pulsant's commitment in edge technologies has very recently been enhanced, please follow this link:

https://www.pulsant.com/knowledge-hub/announcement/pulsant-invests-8m-in-national-network-for-edge-computing/

Please feel free to reach out for an initial discussion.