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EDITOR’S QUESTION
DONNA JOHNSON,
VP PRODUCT AND SOLUTIONS
MARKETING AT CRADLEPOINT
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M
ost businesses are anticipating the
fruition of several extraordinary
technologies being crafted over
the next few years – technologies such
as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and 5G. Edge computing
will be central to the widespread success of
these technologies. It will help organisations
intelligently manage their network edge,
ultimately helping the evolution of IoT, AI
and 5G in the future. As more devices are
connected to the cloud – and IoT systems
progress in a ‘ready-or-not, here we come’
fashion – edge computing will soon become
a well-known practice.
Defining the edge
To understand how edge computing will
impact the enterprise, it’s important to first
define where the edge is located. An enterprise
might define the edge as the remote setting
where the end-user or IoT device is installed,
whereas a mobile network operator might
define the edge slightly differently – as
anything not in the data centre.
The European Telecommunications
Standards Institute (ETSI) uses the term
Multi Access Edge Computing (MEC) to
describe edge computing. Network operators
across the world are starting to deploy MEC
within their networks, starting at the Radio
Access Network (RAN) and then being
deployed closer to the core of the network,
based on the use case.
Edge computing benefits
Edge computing co-locates computing,
storage and networking functions closer to
where the data originates. All edge devices
– routers, sensors, smart devices and much
more – can do edge computing. This reduces
the amount of data being sent back and
forth between devices and the cloud, saving
time and power, conserving bandwidth and
www.intelligentcio.com
reducing latency. Edge computing will provide
additional security for safer transactions, as
well as rapid and cost-effective scaling under a
common infrastructure. cameras that identify open parking spaces.
With edge computing capabilities, these will
only need to transmit meta data, instead of
the whole video stream.
This is important because storing data in
the cloud is no longer a huge cost saving
exercise for businesses. For example, it can
cost nearly US$4,000 per petabyte for long-
term cloud storage and nearly 10 times that
amount for real-time access storage. With
edge computing, applications can send less
data to the cloud, instead processing more
at the edge. A smart city parking solution,
for example, might be connected to video Because edge computing is a horizontal
architecture, it can support multiple industries.
451 Research identifies utilities, transportation,
healthcare and the industrial sectors as
the largest markets for edge computing. It
is on track to pick up speed and will play a
crucial role in IoT, AI, 5G and other advanced
and connected systems, guaranteeing the
connection of ‘cloud-to-things’ success and
driving future business value.
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