CloudEXPO 2019

Real-World Patterns for Edge Computing

We all know that data is exploding at an unprecedented scale. This is largely being fueled by the explosive growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), currently estimated to approach 50 Billion in number by 2020. Whereas most computing devices were previously largely general purpose, when we are talking about IoT, we are talking about single-purpose vertical products that are all generating and emitting an astounding amount of data.

The recent market migration towards centralized cloud solutions has resulted in a pattern where applications are required to push their data to the cloud for processing. This is not scalable at the rate of data growth generated by the IoT. Additionally, the pattern of use of data is changing. Traditionally, data storage was expensive and deriving insight and making decisions the purview of the database or data warehouse. The advent of big data changed all that, ushering in a new era of mass data storage where decisions are now made in real-time on massive fuzzy data sets by machine learning algorithms (rather than by humans).

Even if there was enough storage in the cloud to store all the data, there is no way near enough network to transport all the data to the cloud. The advent of 5G will only increase the amount of Things creating data, while also creating a further imbalance in the network. The hop from Phone or Thing to cellular base station will be faster than the hop from cellular network to Cloud.

This new architectural shift – and what we will be covering in this session - has been termed edge computing. Rather than attempt to pull all of the data back to the cloud, it makes much more sense to process the data at the point of creation. Instead of moving the data, move the compute, harnessing the processing power and resources of all of the Things.