Edge Computing gaining traction

Edge computing is gaining traction quickly, with some analysts deeming it as the next great revolution in technology. Advantage of edge computing is computing that's done at or near the data source to reduce latency and increase bandwidth. As per IDC, the worldwide edge computing market will grow to $250.6 billion by 2024.

Edge Computing offers local Edge Data Centers for data storage and processing. Businesses can depend on reliable connectivity for their IoT applications, even when cloud services are affected. Edge computing allows IoT applications to use less bandwidth and operate normally under conditions of limited connectivity. This enables organizations to add more and more devices in remote locations without any substantial monitoring strategy.

More importantly, as technologies such as AI, IoT, ma­chine learning, big data and cloud computing are becoming more mainstream, developers are increasingly redesigning their offerings to incorporate edge computing to process data as close to their end-users as possible.

While demand will continue to rise in cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi-NCR, other cities such as Kolkata, Pune, Kochi and Jaipur are also likely to witness the completion of edge data centres between 2021 and 2023 on the basis of their ability to service specific geographic zones.

This is because edge data centres offer load distribution, enabling the supply of heavy traffic load from a large, geographically diverse user base, us­ing multiple smaller edge data centres as part of a multi-data centre strategy. Edge computing is a distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to the sources of data.

The increased connectivity and the no. of devices used for edge computing creates more room for cyber criminals to exploit the system’s vulnerabilities. It also creates problems with network visibility and control for the organizations. Any loophole in edge security can provide hackers easy access to the core of a network.

One of the most important things is to implement Zero Trust Edge Access and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)architecture, wherein the cybersecurity team allows minimal or only the required amount of access for each connected device. By this way, if one device is compromised, it’s much harder for a hacker to inflict damage on other resources.

Whereas, SASE makes it easier to look into and control these networks by reducing complexity and automating background security tasks as it brings wide-area networking (WAN) and network security services into a single cloud solution.

Edge allows businesses to bring the digital world into the physical bringing online data and algorithms into brick-and-mortar stores to improve retail experiences, creating systems that workers can train and situations where workers can learn from machines and designing smart environments that look out for our safety and comfort.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA