Edge Computing

Be More Competitive

To be more competitive, edge computing must be secure and protect privacy (encryption). To lower costs, it typically may have specialized nano or microprocessors with more optimized cost-effective cache or memory, and specialized integrated components. It will often exploit other mobile devices and may be software-defined or virtualized, but with lower cost distributed network function virtualization or mobile edge computing architectures. Serverless architectures, mobile edge computing, or ubiquitous computing are related terms.

Edge computing will tend to have secure, fast communications with associated attributes of scalability, reliability, speed, and efficiency. Edge computing or IoT applications include home automation based on increasingly intelligent back-end systems; autonomous vehicles; and terms including “smart”, such as smart city, smart grid, or smart industry. We need to be careful not to define too many boundaries in this area since edge computing takes many forms and is constantly evolving.

As edge computing is enabled by all forms of standard secure communication, it will be further enhanced by reliable 5G wireless because it is not bound by any one construct. Since it can be a profitable extension of an organization or of the hybrid data center, it will increasingly be multi-cloud, gaining more intelligence as it feeds from more artificially intelligent sources.