The Significance of Edge Computing

The present era is all about digitalization and its multiple aspects. You’ll hardly find any person or company without a reliable internet connection these days. Edge computing is effortlessly making its way into industries and businesses. After all, it’s gaining an enormous amount of popularity because of the increasing demands of the cloud service users as well as huge data explosion via the internet of things or IoT.

Edge computing

Edge computing can be defined as ‘the practice of processing data near the edge of your network, where the data is being generated instead of in a centralized data-processing warehouse.’ Most business owners find edge computing as one of the best ways to simplify the internet of things traffic and to assist local data analysis in real-time. Furthermore, IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) has made data processing even closer to its source. Note that the source includes real industrial machinery as well. According to a study conducted in the field, edge computing will reach its peak shortly in the future in terms of productivity.

On top of that, the rising innovations when it comes to IoT and AI indicates the maturity of edge computing. However, the rise in edge computing doesn’t make cloud computing an outdated method or a history. In fact, both these options are equally significant for the growth of the IT industry. Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Technologies recently passed a statement on edge computing. He said, “it will be everything and everywhere, i.e. the Internet of Things, which means that ultimately it will be the Internet of Everything.” According to a survey conducted recently, it is predicted that edge computing is most likely to capture around $3.25 billion of the global market by 2025. Besides, edge computing will be advantageous for industries such as aerospace, oil and gas, power utilities, and automotive when it comes to augmenting complex operations. Below are some of the ways in which cloud computing can be a boon to all industries.

Security

The scams and threats in the cyberworld are increasing every single day with the growth of IoT devices. Thankfully, edge computing can provide a higher level of security to your company from such attacks and vulnerabilities. In this case, the distribution of application, storage, and processing are done across a wide range of devices and data centers. This provides almost total protection or coverage for your company network against intruders and threats.

Note that IoT devices are usually susceptible to cyberattacks. Nevertheless, you can easily seal the sensible portion of data rather than shutting down the entire network in this case as a result of the distributed framework of edge computing. Besides, along with outstandingly huge security support, it offers great reliability as well.

Speed

The speed is one of the most significant factors that play a key role in the success of any business. This made edge computing a popular choice amongst industries since it enhances network speed and performance by opposing latency. On a related note for edge computing, since the data is handled at a remote edge data center, the gathered information does not have to travel long distances. According to some experts, digital traffic jams are sure to occur by 2020 if there is no edge computing assistance.

In simple words, edge computing offers a low latency rate boosting up the speed at the customer’s end. This is one of the main reasons why edge computing cannot be ignored when it comes to speed benefits. Note that latency is measured in microseconds here instead of milliseconds.

Scalability

Companies that are keen on expanding their business empire often think about building a dedicated data center to tackle their enhanced business operations. Sadly, this proposition will be very expensive for some business owners. This paved the way for the rise of edge computing. Moreover, inadequate computing resources, as well as the increasing computing requirements, also play a major role in the popularity of edge computing.

Note that edge computing tends to offer scalability to all the companies at an affordable price range since it features an exceptional combination of edge devices and IoT. Plus, the addition of new devices on the network does not impose bandwidth requirements on it easing the overall growth cost.

Versatility

Another major factor that contributes to the immense popularity of edge computing is its versatility. As mentioned earlier in regards to edge computing, data processing is done at the local edge data center. Hence, companies will be able to target potential or desired markets using this data center and do not require an affluent investment structure. Plus, the companies will be able to offer the best services to the users because of speed benefits.

The companies can also offer better facilities and services to the users by combining IoT devices to the network. Autonomous vehicles and voice assistance technologies are some of the major industries where edge computing has great applications that can pave way for their growth in the future.