Why enterprises are inching toward edge computing to capitalize on their data assets

As I’ve mentioned previously, data is the Middle East’s most valuable new resource. It may even be the new oil. This is happening at a time when the flexibility and agility of cloud computing is becoming the established business infrastructure and applications environment. This is critical for MEA organizations to best handle the growing volumes of data to process, analyze, and act on the insights it provides. But what will the next stage of data-driven business look like – and will it see many enterprises in the region using edge technologies to maximize the value of their data?

Believe the hype

Gartner’s latest hype cycle is a revealing place to start. Unsurprisingly, cloud computing has reached a rising slope of adoption. But edge computing and its various subsets are a dominating force in emerging or peak technologies, notably in data-driven areas such as blockchain and AI. As organizations seek to enhance what they can do with their data, edge appears to be a clear innovation trigger in this respect. But why?

The internet of things (IoT) has already played a big part in this, opening up vast data-rich areas that businesses can mine. With the arrival of 5G, IoT connectivity will become much quicker and more resilient (thanks to its low latency). This is already expected to establish the Middle East and Africa as a hub for smart cities and transport, as part of a national development drive. This is the kind of purpose that edge computing (defined by IDC as a “mesh network of micro data centres that process or store critical data locally and push all received data to a central data centre or cloud storage repository”) was intended for.

Cloud computing at the edge

With a plethora of smart devices and “micro data centres” at play in this distributed digital infrastructure, there is a significant amount of data being produced but not necessarily effectively ‘computed’. This is where cloud computing can combine with edge computing to provide enterprises with a more end-to-end approach to (very) big data insight.

To make this data a source of valuable insight rather than a burden of time and resources will require the right approach to a cloud infrastructure that supports different areas of the business with the insight that is relevant to them. Cloud is the perfect complement to edge computing and the data explosion. Seamless, cloud-based applications are able to help workforces process and analyze data in a much more manageable and useful way, as 5G, IoT, and edge capabilities converge.

Cloud and edge computing combined are likely to be the most popular path chosen by the major players in MEA. There is a clear opportunity here, especially as the region is establishing itself on the leading edge (no pun intended) of these technologies. Cloud will accelerate the value-added opportunities that will emerge with 5G, IoT, and edge computing – and help those forward-looking organizations quickly develop new data-drive capabilities as a result.