This past decade was about digital transformation, primarily cloud migration, what to move to the cloud, which environments are best for your specific needs, the various ways to efficiently migrate your data, and the best times for it to happen.
Over the course of this next decade, cloud adoption will continue to rise as companies embrace flexible consumption through both hybrid and multi-cloud environments as the foundation of their digital transformation strategies. For many companies, the hybrid cloud approach serves as a crucial step in the long process of digital transformation. Due to several factors, including a reliance on legacy systems and the need to comply with corporate regulations, many organizations are opting to house their workloads on both private and public clouds while still keeping some on-premise. And as such, cloud providers attempt to make the migration experience of moving workloads to the cloud quick and relatively painless.
Edge Computing
According to Spiceworks, while edge computing technology has been adopted by only 15% of organizations to date, there is expected to be exponential growth early in the decade. The advent and proliferation of edge computing is the result of the aggressive growth of devices connecting to the Internet of Things (IoT) resulting in the need to receive information from a device or sensor and have it processed at the network edge. Edge computing brings greater capabilities by processing data closer to users and devices.
Edge computing is expected to see explosive growth over the next decade with research predicting the market will increase to $43.4 billion by 2027, up 37.4% since 2019. – Grant View Research
Edge computing infrastructure can be made up of edge-compute hardware like an edge server, services, micro data centers and edge gateways. The edge gateway is considered an edge device, meant for local processing where data is either sent back through the cloud or back to other edge devices like IoT sensors, machines, PCs, smartphones, etc. Interestingly, devices like smartphones could also handle edge compute.
The number of devices connected to the internet is expected to explode. Although figures vary widely on the precise number of IoT devices being used today, we do know that adoption is incredibly high—and will continue to grow and transform the way we work and do business both now and in the future.
Key Benefits of Edge Computing
- Local processing/reduction in bandwidth costs (data transport)
- Faster data processing
- Adequate/addressable data storage for processing and easy access
- On-demand compute and real-time applications
- Reduction in application latency
- Increased throughput and faster delivery of services to and from the enterprise
Edge compute will ultimately make our lives easier by reducing if not eliminating tasks that require a great deal of interaction from us today. We are already seeing some of the benefits from IoT in our cars and appliances for service reminders. Edge compute is just beginning to catch on and will continue to play a large part of our futures for both the enterprises and consumers of the world.
As your telecom and IT solutions expert, REACH takes pride in keeping you connected. To discuss any cloud infrastructure matters, connect with us today by calling Valerie at 715-330-4200 or filling out our contact form.