So, Edge computing is now the new buzzword that has gained huge traction in recent times.
I first came across this term while I was researching studies on the future of IoT.
So, Edge computing is now the new buzzword that has gained huge traction in recent times.
I first came across this term while I was researching studies on the future of IoT.
I then watched a couple of videos about Edge Computing on Youtube, listened to a few podcasts, and read at least a dozen articles online.
Here’s what I found about Edge Computing:
Edge computing is basically a paradigm that brings data storage and computation closer to the device’s location so that the bandwidth can be saved and the response time can be improved.
The main goal of edge computing is to move the computation away from data storage centers and put it near the edge of the network to provide services and perform tasks on behalf of the cloud.
The need for edge computing arose mainly due to the increase of IoT devices producing a gigantic amount of data for data centers to compute and pushing the network bandwidth requirements to its limits.
If you’re an enterprise facing a similar situation, here’s what I have found upon researching on edge computing. These observations will definitely help you in implementing edge computing smoothly.
Pure Cloud Computing Is No Longer The Best Option IoT
Cloud adoption is soaring.
According to LogicMonitor Survey, 83% of the enterprise workloads will soon be handled by the Cloud. The main reason for this increase is mainly because cloud has proved to reduce operational costs, increased reliability, app deployment time, and also improved scalability.
However, when it’s the matter of IoT, pure cloud computing has some unavoidable drawbacks.
Operational Costs Can Grow – If you use the traditional cloud computing in your enterprise, the operational costs will grow with respect to the amount of data being generated and shared.
Performance Problems – IoT apps heavily rely on real-time events. But, the processing power of clouds often varies depending on the actual distance between the server location and the device, causing issues in your IoT application’s performance.
Security Threats – Since data will be transmitted back and forth consistently, the risk of privacy violation is at huge risk.
And on top of all these, a majority amount of data being stored on the cloud don’t often have any practical value and hence they’re never used.
So, if you think about it, you’re actually wasting a lot of cloud storage space on useless data.
This is the main reason the need for edge computing has arose in the first place.
With that being said, let’s also discuss a few benefits of edge computing for IoT applications.
Benefits of Edge Computing
The concept of edge computing is to decentralize the data handling, which ultimately offers way better benefits than the pure cloud computing.
Here are the top 5 benefits of edge computing in IoT applications.
1 – Better Performance
Like I mentioned earlier, data takes time to travel from the device to the server location. And as a result, it slows down the performance of the IoT application.
But, edge computing allows storing and processing of all data close ot its source, which eliminates the lag time and improves application performance.
This new way of data processing ultimately helps to analyze the data in real-time without any delays.
2 – Increased Reliability
Since the majority of useless data will not be stored on the cloud, the data traffic and storage will be reduced, which will ultimately lead to more efficient business operations.
On top of that, the connection issues will also be eliminated as it will make your devices work autonomously and also without any internet connection.
3 – Increased Data Security
IoT solutions are currently the perfect target for hackers, but edge computing can help to secure the networks by increasing data privacy.
Since data in the edge computing will be decentralized and distributed among all the devices in the network, it will be nearly impossible for hackers to take it down and cause any damage.
In fact, this particular approach is also preferred by the new GDPR compliance. The guidelines clearly recommend transmitting the sensitive information as little as possible.
4 – Reduced Operational Costs
Again, since edge computing asks to store and process most of your data near its source, you will no longer need an abundance of cloud storage space.
In addition, you can also easily filter out the unnecessary information and create a backup of only the relevant and useful data.
5 – High Scalability
As opposite to cloud, edge computing helps you scale your IoT network much faster and only as needed, without having the available cloud storage necessarily.
This advantage ultimately boosts the productivity of IoT applications, when it comes to time-sensitive tasks.
Conclusion
It is now clear that the edge computing is indeed a much-needed component for IoT app development.
Considering its existing trend, enterprises and IoT development services companies have already started to take edge computing for their upcoming products.
If you’re also planning to invest in any sort of IoT application or make improvements in your existing IoT application, I would say that the ROI of such edge computing IoT applications is quite attractive.
