What Is Edge Computing & How It Can Benefit Your Business?
At Spectra Networks, we make it our mission to stay on top of emerging technology and how it could impact your business. Edge computing is one such advancement that could benefit many businesses going forward. That being said, we thought it would be a good idea to let our readers in on what edge computing is, if you haven't heard that terminology before, and how it could be advantageous for your organization.
What is Edge Computing?
Gartner research defines edge computing as, “a part of a distributed computing topology in which information processing is located close to the edge—where things and people produce or consume that information.”According to this Gartner report entitled 2021 Strategic Roadmap for Edge Computing, “Edge computing is entering the mainstream as organizations look to extend cloud to on premises and to take advantage of IoT and transformational digital business applications. I&O leaders must incorporate edge computing into their cloud computing plans as a foundation for new application types over the long term."So what does that mean in layman's terms? Edge computing is simply computing that’s done at or near the source (or, near the edge of the cloud), rather than relying on the cloud at one of a dozen data centers to do all the work. It doesn’t mean the cloud will disappear. Instead, it means the cloud is coming to you.
How Edge Computing Can Benefit Your Organization
Still not sure how this can, and will impact your business? Here are a few ways that this edge computing can positively impact your business’s efficiency, security, and scalability.
Speed & Efficiency
Speed of technology is vital to most businesses in today’s digital world. No one has time to wait for processing speeds that are slow or clunky. VChange online recently reported that edge computing’s most significant benefit is the ability to significantly reduce latency. The term latency means the speed at which it takes for a request to travel from the sender to the receiver and for the receiver to process that request. Since data is kept on “the edge,” the distance it needs to travel from browser to serve and back again is reduced. Thus there is an instant increase in speed and efficiency that every business relies on to be successful.
Stronger Security
In addition to being faster, edge computing does provide some security advantages. Since traditional cloud computing is very centralized, there is great vulnerability if that location is compromised. Think power outages or DDoS attacks. Unlike cloud computing, this form of computing spreads out the processing, storage, and applications across a wide range of devices and data centers. This distribution makes it difficult for any single disruption to take down the entire network.
Scalability
If speed, efficiency, and greater security doesn’t make you consider edge technology, then maybe the ability to grow as your business grows is a compelling reason to try this computing technology. Edge computing is very scalable, especially for organizations that start with a small footprint and hope to work their way up. Edge computing, which is shifting the data to the edge of most cloud computing centers has several advantages that you may want to consider for your organization. If you need more information about how this would work for your specific company, talk to our specialists today.
