The edge isn’t at the edge anymore. It isn’t some place. It’s every place.
While watching a short HPE video about the edge, those three short sentences caught my attention. So, what exactly is the edge? And has it morphed to include not only at the edge but every place?
A recent article published on HPE’s enterprise.nxt site explores this topic: What's the edge really about? We asked our experts. It’s well worth your time to read the entire article, as it includes valuable insights from three industry luminaries from IoT, networking, and AI.
For those a bit constrained on time, I’ve highlighted my favorite excerpts below.
What is edge computing exactly?
The edge is broadly defined as a place where people, places, things, and their data intersect. To further explore the topic, the author asks the experts five questions.
1. When people talk about the edge, what does that mean to you?
My favorite answer to this question came from Lin Nease, chief technologist for IoT in HPE's advisory and professional services group, as well as an HPE Fellow, with the memorable octopus analogy:
“The edge is the tentacles of the octopus. It's everything that resides outside those massive multipurpose air-conditioned data centers, which we now think of as the data center core.”
Dr. Eng Lim Goh, CTO for high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at HPE pointed out something about the edge that most people probably don’t consider:
“A key characteristic of edge devices is that, on their network side, they have much more data flowing out than coming in.”
2. Why is the edge suddenly such a hot topic? What's driving this?
I’ve always been fascinated with Moore’s Law, so I like Nease’s reference to it – and his examples of use cases.
“We've reached the point with Moore's Law where we're able to bring compute and data processing into the physical world in the form of IoT devices. And that enables a wide range of new use cases. For example, we can build facial recognition logic into cameras, so they can identify people immediately. When we're driving and roaming between cell sites, our car's navigation system still has to work; that requires processing data at the edge. If you're operating a natural gas pipeline across a remote stretch of land, you might have at best a low-bandwidth satellite connection. The logic that's controlling the pumps has to happen at the edge.
3. How important are technologies like cloud-native computing and AI to making edge computing work?
Partha Narasimhan, former CTO at Aruba, an HPE company and a leading provider of next-gen network access technology answers this question by pointing out the need to keep pace with constantly changing technology combined with flexibility.
“Cloud-native technologies like microservices, containers, and orchestration are important for agility and scale. Nothing stays the same for very long, and you need the ability to keep pace as the technology changes. You may also want to run some applications on the edge and others in the cloud, then shift between them depending on the needs of the customer or the environment. Using cloud-native services at the edge gives us the flexibility to do that.”
4. What are the barriers to wide-scale deployment on the edge?
All three experts had interesting answers to this question. Both Nease and Narasimhan are concerned with security issues. Goh explains how environmental obstacles tend to be a huge hurdle.
“The energy and environmental constraints I mentioned earlier: If you're building an edge device to go into a car, for example, it has to be able to run off a 12-volt battery. You can't use a fan for cooling because it will quickly become clogged by dust. If it's operating next to people, it can't be too loud. And so on. HPE built a high-performance computer for the International Space Station—the literal edge. One of the constraints was that it had to draw less than 500 watts. [Editor's note: Supercomputers like the HPE-Cray Aurora require 60,000 times more than that.] Another was that it had to survive the vibration of blast off and radiation levels 10 to 100 times higher than on the earth's surface. Those all had to be factored into the design.”
5. What else should enterprises be thinking about as they begin to deploy edge technologies?
Narasimhan offers readers a clear warning.
“There's been such a mad rush to digitize and automate the physical world that we're underestimating the number of vulnerabilities it creates. I remember being at an Aruba user conference in 2017 when AWS went down and we couldn't run any of our demos. It was both amusing and alarming to see the number of people complaining that they couldn't open their garage doors or operate other devices in their homes. We just assume these things will be available when we need them. The level of attention cybersecurity requires is not keeping pace with the rate of edge adoption.”
The edge: It’s every place
To bring this blog back to where we started, I’ll ask the question again: Is the edge moving from a specific place to every place? IDC predicts there will be 55.7 B connected devices worldwide by 2025, and 75% of them will be connected to an IoT platform. That stat is pretty revealing. Combined with HPE’s broad definition of edge (a place where people, places, things, and the data intersect), I believe the edge is no longer some place; indeed, it’s every place.
To read the full article, visit What's the edge really about? We asked our experts.
These excerpts were taken from an in-depth report on the Edge. If you would like to hear more predictions, best practices, and uses, please explore the rest of the report: Your Edge, Your Future.
Al
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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Al_Madden
Al Madden is involved in all things Edge. With degrees in chemistry and marketing, he is committed to finding the best ways to put technology to work. Whether in environmental monitoring, power distribution, semiconductors, or IT, Al now focuses mostly on making tech consumable, understandable, and usable through marketing and content strategy.