Someone asked recently, is the edge pendulum swinging? I looked at the person surprised, because this strong trend has been unfolding for a few years now, evident by investments by large compute providers like hardware servers, suppliers of edge compute / gateways and edge software stack for the edge, like Redhat, who are all betting on the edge.
Why?
- Because of AI/ML driven inferences moving to the edge. Why?
- Because there is a lot more data being generated at the edge. Why?
- Because the sensors in our environment is exploding at the edge. Why?
- Because our world, the edge where the physical meets the digital is now capable of delivering new business experiences, and fast becoming a highly sensor-driven environment. And?
- The concerns due to this exploding complexity throws up many related concerns like, cyber-security, storing the data, keeping the edge updated …
This explosion also means a few things, in terms of end-to-end solution. It is not enough to say “… get me the data to my compute / cloud… I will do magic…”. The end-to-end solution delivery platforms are complex, due to need to support multiple protocols, complex up/down time conditions and the various device/sensor types, depending on your domain, your personas, the experiences one is trying to deliver.
A key consideration: a platform’s capability to “abstract” the complexity of the edge and, deliver data from the edge in a cohesive way in order to be able to make decisions is turning out to be important in large, distributed, global enterprises. Yes, the pendulum has decisively swung towards the edge!!!
