The Next Big Innovations in Edge Computing, According to Industry Experts:
As a result of the unprecedented demand for high-performance applications and digital experiences, many companies are scaling their infrastructure to the edge. When making this transition, it’s essential not to do it in a vacuum; instead, you need to be aware of what other companies are doing, what edge technologies will become more common, and what risks are likely to emerge.
We’ve previously identified the top industry experts to follow for edge computing, and we’ve asked a few of them for their insights regarding the trends that will impact edge initiatives in the near future. Read on to discover essential trends that you’ll need to know about when it comes to the future of edge computing and networking.
Dean Bubley: The Focus Shifts from 5G to a Local, Interconnected Edge
Dean Bubley is the founder and director of Disruptive Analysis Limited, a London-based technology & telecoms advisory company. He is a vocal thought leader in the space surrounding telecoms firms, 5G, Wi-Fi, spectrum policy, IoT, and emerging technologies like edge computing. He’s discussed edge technologies on the Over the Edge podcast and has presented a webinar on edge computing on behalf of the 5G-focused training firm Apis Training.
In 2022, edge computing will start to separate away from some of the hype around 5G, with which it has only a tenuous link. Instead, the focus will be on two areas:
Interconnected and federated edge, where a growing need for metro and regional interconnections will emerge between access providers, cloud platforms, and enterprises. While the focus will still be on latency, there will be an additional pressure point of security and resilience. Where telecom service providers are involved, a key phrase will be “local breakout,” allowing interconnect at the most efficient points in their infrastructure.
There will be a further shift to on-premise and on-device edge. Driven by demands for privacy, low latency, and low power, a significant amount of data will be processed and stored in-situ or near-situ. Numerous hybrids will be created, for instance with AI tools performing learning workloads in the cloud, but inferencing at the edge.
An outlier trend is around supply-chain volatility for semiconductors and compute equipment. This will mean a greater need for flexibility in equipment choice as well as fallbacks to “alternative edge,” where shortages cause problems or different cost profiles.
Stephanie Overby: Centralized Edge Management Takes Center Stage
Stephanie Overby is an award-winning reporter and writer with 20 years of professional journalism experience. In the last ten years, she has focused on the intersection of business and technology. She has written extensively about edge computing for The Enterprisers Project. Across her career, her work has been featured in CIO Magazine, CMO.com, SmartMoney, Inc.com, and the New York Times.
As enterprises embrace edge computing, management at the edge will take center stage. As has happened with the explosion of cloud computing adoption, attention eventually must turn to issues of centralized management, visibility, and scalability. IT leaders will need to invest in tools and processes and advance their capabilities in this area so that they can deploy and manage edge solutions as easily as any other platform within their environments.
Antonio Pellegrino - Edge Becomes a Viable Alternative for On-Premise Deployments
Antonio “pelle” Pellegrino is the founder and CEO of Mutable, which makes network operators’ underutilized resources available to those who need low-latency edge computing capabilities. He is passionate about the power of edge to make next-generation projects come to life. He has contributed to State of the Edge and has appeared at the Edge Computing World conference, where Mutable was named Edge Startup of the Year in 2020.
2022 is going to be a breakout year for edge computing, from cloud gaming and VR to video analytics/image recognition, from private 5G/local breakouts to the push for Web 3.0 and the metaverse.
Perhaps the most tangible of these will be cloud gaming and VR. Finally, customers will be able to stream high-quality games with low latency to their homes and portable devices. However, what’s truly exciting is that we’re finally going to be able to experience low-latency cloud VR game streaming, where we can go below 20 ms and not have headaches. This is the lead-in for the metaverse to hit scale.
The biggest use case, which has been overlooked by many, is moving on-premise deployment strategies to the edge. This was always a major goal of cloud providers for the last decade, but there have been major holdouts, particularly in the Finance and Medical industries. Edge computing will make a huge dent in this with 5G/local breakouts and private edge cloud, breaking the stalemate of on-premise deployment strategies.
2022 is going to be an exciting year for many of these technologies, and Mutable will be there at the frontier, paving the way for whatever comes next!
And of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t offer insight from our own edge thought leader and influencer…
Kris Beevers - Edge Complexity Sets the Stage for Smart Network Technologies
Kris Beevers is the co-founder and CEO of NS1, which creates products that enable companies to deliver dynamic, distributed, and automated applications at the edge. Kris is a recognized authority on DNS, global application delivery, distributed cloud architectures, and edge computing. He is a contributor to the Forbes Tech Council and often speaks and writes about building and deploying edge computing and edge networking technologies.
As companies scale their infrastructure, they’re reaching the point where manual processes can no longer keep up with the complexity of the network or the risks tied to that complexity. A single store regularly hosts hundreds or thousands of sensors. Each of these devices could fail or be compromised — and no one can manually monitor and respond to every issue in real-time.
To ensure consistent reliability and connectivity across their distributed architecture, companies will look for ways to more effectively manage this complexity at the edge. They will learn to leverage smart network services to orchestrate all the critical control points across their networks to better understand, automate, and secure every digital interaction.
