Latency Reduction is Not the Only Advantage of Edge Computing

Application latency varies almost directly with how far away processing happens, which is the argument for greater amounts of edge computing in the future. On device processing has almost no latency. An on-premises server might have latency of a millisecond or so.

Edge computing at nearby locations in a metro area might have latency as low as a millisecond, or as high as six milliseconds, depending on where the processing happens in a metro area. Far end processing at a hyperscale data center has latency between 50 milliseconds and 55 milliseconds.

But that, of course, refers only to transmission latency, not processing latency. 

source: Deloitte

That noted, there are other business advantages for edge computing, including the reduction of spending and cost for long-haul, wide area networking. In other cases, edge computing supplies value in terms of non-interrupted processing, in cases where WAN bandwidth connections are intermittent, or must be designed to continue operating if WAN connectivity is momentarily lost. 

In other cases, security can be an advantage, essentially allowing apps to run “sandboxed” and compartmentalized from each other. That might be especially true where there are regulations about the movement of data out of area. 

Processing efficiency also can be an advantage, when a huge amount of data--most of it essentially noise--has to be filtered before analytics can be performed. Likewise, if data formatting is necessary, and volumes of data are significant, doing that at the edge, before sending it across the WAN, might make sense. 

source: Deloitte

Vapor IO Introduces Kinetic Edge Exchange for Edge Interconnection

Vapor IO has announced its new Kinetic Edge Exchange, described by Vapor IO as “the world’s first software-defined system for interconnection in edge locations.” 

The neutral host exchange will allow network operators, application developers, content providers and other Kinetic Edge users to cross-connect in edge meet-me rooms.

source: Vapor IO

Vapor IO’s KEX will first be deployed in Chicago and Atlanta with Digital Realty.

“The Internet requires a new way to interconnect networks at the edge because edge applications demand an order-of-magnitude reduction in latency over the status quo,” said Cole Crawford, Founder and CEO of Vapor IO. “The Kinetic Edge Exchange delivers this capability on demand. 

“Until today, automated software-defined interconnection was not available at the edge, making it difficult or impossible for enterprises to deploy edge applications at scale,” he said.

More than Half of Enteprrise IT Infrastructure Going to Edge by 2023

By 2023, more than 50 percent of new enterprise infrastructure deployed will be at the edge rather than corporate data centers, up from less than 10 percent today, IDC predicts. By 2024, the number of apps at the edge will increase 800 percent, according to IDC. 

"Over the next four years, IT services at the edge will be evolving rapidly and will expand beyond being just about customer experience and commerce experience. It will evolve to include more critical edge use cases, like AR-assisted surgery, or autonomous vehicles etc," says Frank Gens, IDC chief research officer. 

A separate study of edge computing suggests managed edge computing services could represent as much as a quarter of edge computing industry revenues, with infrastructure (hardware, software, services) representing most of the revenue. 

source: Grandview Research

IoT Edge Increases Attack Surface

Internet of things is going to increase potential attack surfaces by billions of locations at the edge of the 5G network, but that is only one of the ways 5G networks will require more security thinking at the edge of the network. 

5G networks will require openness and collaboration to a greater extent than did 4G, in part because core networks are virtualized and because radio access networks will also increasingly use open source platforms. 

So 5G networks will consist of multiple layers of equipment, processes, and services, from data center processors and cloud management stacks all the way up to operations center software, and each layer is “at least in part, open, to allow interoperability between and among different partners or suppliers,” says  Rajeev Suri, Nokia CEO.

Also, with the expected growth of internet of things devices at the edge of the network, the number of attack surfaces will grow by billions of locations. Also, network slicing will enable virtual private networks, introducing another level of security.

Charter Looking at Edge Computing Role

Charter Communications appears to be considering whether it has a role in creating edge computing infrastructure. “We talk to with gaming companies about putting compute power deeper in the network,” said Tom Rutledge, Charter Communications CEO. “When you look at real estate footprint we have lots of hubs throughout our architecture that have space in them.”

“And as a result of that we are able to stand up high compute, low latency networks that are hard to replicate,” said Rutledge.

AI, Edge Dominate Gartner Top-10 Technologies List

Of the top-ten strategic technology trends for 2020 identified by Gartner, most involve artificial intelligence or the change in computing from centralized to distributed. 

source: Gartner

As I would categorize the major classes of technology, AI and edge account for nine of the top-10 categories. 

Top 10 Strategic Technologies, AI or Edge Related
AI Related	Edge Related
Hyper-automation	Multi-experience
Democratization of Expertise	Empowered edge
Human augmentation	Distributed cloud
Transparency, traceability	Autonomous things
AI security

“Much of the current focus on edge computing comes from the need for IoT systems to deliver disconnected or distributed capabilities into the embedded IoT world for specific industries such as manufacturing or retail,” said Brian Burke, Gartner Research VP.  “However, edge computing will become a dominant factor across virtually all industries and use cases as the edge is empowered with increasingly more sophisticated and specialized compute resources and more data storage. Complex edge devices, including robots, drones, autonomous vehicles and operational systems will accelerate this shift.” 

Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020

Edge computing, distributed computing and apps requiring and benefiting from edge represent half of the top-10 strategic technologies for 2020, according to Gartner. Nearly all the others involve artificial intelligence. 

Edge Computing for Smart Cities Driven in Part by Urbanization

Urbanization is a demographic trend many believe will drive use cases for edge computing, which is expected to be used to support many smart city applications. And the potential benefit from smart city applications is expected by many to increase because problems created by urbanization are going to increase. 

Today, approximately 55 percent of the world’s population lives in cities, reaching 68 percent by 2050, according to the United Nations.

Altogether, that will represent 2.5 billion more residents living in the world’s big cities, the UN predicts, with perhaps obvious implications for infrastructure, traffic congestion, energy consumption, supply of water, sanitation and other services. 

source: Naya Energy

In 2010, new economies represented half of the world’s gross domestic product. By 2015 new economies will represent 65 percent of global GDP. 

Each week nearly 1.5 million people move to cities, almost all of them in new economies. We are seeing a huge shift with the emergence of new economies. It is said that 90% of the world’s urban population growth will take place in developing countries, with India taking a significant share of that. 

source: UN

source: Our World in Data

Data Center Professionals See High-Bandiwidth Apps Drving 42% of Edge Computing

Even if the specific value of edge computing is support of applications requiring ultra-low latency, 42 percent of respondents believe edge computing will be useful to support high-bandwidth apps, a survey of 800 professionals involved with data centers, finds.

source: Vertiv

Use cases where the amount of data or transport cost makes it impractical to transfer over the network directly to remote cloud computing facilities, or from the cloud to the point-of-use, include smart factories, smart cities, high-definition content delivery and virtual reality, Vertiv suggests. 

Participants believe 5G will have greatests value enabling smart cities, smart security, smart transportation, connected vehicles and autonomous vehicles. 

source: Vertiv

Of participants who have edge sites today or expect to have edge sites in 2025, more than half (53 percent) expect the number of edge sites they support to grow by at least 100 percent with 20 percent expecting a 400 percent or more increase, says Vertiv. 

For the 494 qualified respondents to this question, the total number of edge sites supported is expected to grow from 128,233 today to 418,803 in 2025, a 226 percent increase.

Enterprises, Telcos See Different Drives for Edge Computing Value

Edge computing is viewed by telecom operator executives as connected with their 5G plans, according to a survey by Heavy Reading. Enterprise customers overwhelmingly link edge computing with AI applications. None of that should be surprising. 

For mobile service providers, edge computing potentially represents an incremental new revenue source, an ability to earn revenue from supplying third parties with edge computing and storage. 

For enterprises, edge computing is a way to support compute-intensive, immersive applications such as virtual reality, augmented reality or other ultra-low-latency use cases, including industrial or factory automation. 

source: Heavy Reading

For telecom operators, the top use cases for edge computing  are 5G (selected by 67 percent of telecom respondents), IoT (selected by 63 percent), ultra-reliable, ultra-low latency applications (selected by 55 percent), and high-performance content delivery (selected by 47 percent). 

For enterprises, the top drivers are AI applications (selected by 61 percent of enterprise respondents), ultra-reliable, ultra-low latency applications (selected by 57 percent), and IoT (selected by 48 percent). 

source: Heavy Reading

It likely goes without saying that enterprises more frequently view edge computing as something that happens on premises, using enterprise-owned facilities, not services purchased from an off-site edge computing supplier. 

For connectivity providers, there is no natural role if the edge computing is done on edge devices directly, or on the premises, using enterprise-owned gear. Connectivity providers might play a role when computing is somewhere off the premises, but within the metro area, within several miles of locations where edge devices must be supported. 

That also corresponds roughly to the location of macrocell transmission sites, which means tower network operators might also have a role to play. 

source: Heavy Reading

SaaS Changes Enterprise Software Buying Patterns

Cloud apps provided “as a service” are changing the way enterprises buy information technology capabilities, a survey of Australian and New Zealand enterprise business and IT leaders suggests. 

Where once IT groups might have been the main decision makers, now business units are able to take over the selection, procurement and deployment of complex systems when they are provided as a service. That arguably leads to an increase in software velocity, as traditionally risk-averse IT staffs lose gatekeeper status, to a great extent. 

Software as a service business models shift risk to the SaaS providers, allowing business groups to focus on the advantages of new software platforms. 

source: Technology One

The survey suggests that sales, human resources, field workforce management and customer service groups now control their budgets for enterprise solutions. 

Customer service and field operations have surged ahead in terms of decision-making power for enterprise applications, even surpassing marketing, Technology One says. “This is partly explained by the desire to provide new customer service experiences as quickly as possible.”

Who Will Own the Edge Data Center?

It remains unclear how the ownership of edge computing facilities will develop. For starters, much depends on which “edge” is the venue. As often has been the case, computing modes determine whether there is a role for connectivity providers or not. 

On-device computing and on-premises computing might not create unusual needs for wide area network connectivity. Remote data center interactions (remote data center and cloud computing; metro data center or other distributed, off-premises computing) necessarily creates a demand for WAN or other outside-the-building communications. 

But even where edge computing is required, it is not yet clear how ownership and operation of such edge computing facilities will develop. Connectivity providers, cell tower companies, specialized third party venue communications providers, new wholesale providers (neutral host) or existing cloud computing providers might have logical roles. It also is possible that some suppliers of edge compute infrastructure might eventually assume some broader roles in edge computing, despite the channel conflict. 

Some believe existing cloud stakeholders are not the logical candidates to supply edge computing infrastructure, in part because edge computing will virtually require app providers to use facilities owned by hundreds of suppliers globally. That suggests an open model, with standardized interfaces, perhaps along the lines of the developing multi-cloud capability.

Perhaps the same argument might be made for the legacy content delivery network providers, which might face the same constraints as the hyperscale platforms: openness and scale.  

Other logical candidates include cell tower companies, which own distributed real estate assets, or mobile operators, with central office and mobile switching facilities that could be converted into edge data centers. 

Edge computing facilities must provide somewhat distinct capabilities for use cases of various types, a study by STL Partners finds. 

Artificial reality and virtual reality application developers want graphics processor units GPUs persistent, fast solid state storage. As has been the case for content delivery networks in general, standard application programming interfaces and guaranteed processing speeds, plus controlled latency, are the requirements. 

Unmanned aerial vehicle apps require sub-10 millisecond  latency. Location-based services require ubiquity.

Even if latency reduction is the obvious and primary advantage of edge computing, as was the case for content delivery networks in general, there might be any number of use cases where the value actually lies in reducing wide area network hairpinning, where traffic traverses the wide area network to communicate with another device located on the same local network. 

In perhaps a third class of use cases, there could be security or privacy advantages, as when anonymized and aggregated data sets are sent back to data centers for analysis, while actual user data remains local. 

source: STL Partners

source: STL Partners

source: STL Partners

Crown Castle Does Not Envision Being in the Edge Data Center Business

Though American Tower and American Tower purchased the Colo Atl data center in Atlanta and SBA Communications acquired a data center in Chicago called New Continuum, presumably to explore potential roles in edge computing facilities, Crown Castle does not see that as part of its own strategy. 

“At this point, I really don’t see data centers playing a significant role in our long-term strategy,” said Jay Brown, Crown Castle CEO. “ We think the opportunity for us really relies around towers and then the use of fiber for small cells.”

“We think that the vast majority of the opportunity is going to lie in those two areas (small cells and towers), he said. 

“We think there’s opportunity, not only to create potentially a lease-up business by utilizing the space at the very edge of the network, which we would have as a result of our investments in small cells and towers,” he added.

If You Thought BYOD was a Problem, Here Comes IoT

To the extent that employees bringing their own devices and apps into the enterprise environment have created security and other challenges for information technology teams, the coming explosion of internet of things devices will compound such challenges. 

Likewise, to the extent that exposing enterprise devices and apps to the internet creates security challenges, IoT devices might create exponentially greater risks, in part because there are so many additional devices and in part because so many will be lower-cost devices hard to secure in economical ways. 

Some 88 percent of U.S. and U.K.  information technology decision makers surveyed on behalf of Kollective believing IoT devices will make their workplaces more efficient. But with so many new internet of things devices possibly deployed, 55 percent of respondents also consider security risks to be the number one roadblock for IoT adoption in the enterprise. 

Over half (52 percent) of IT leaders surveyed on behalf of Kollective believe internet of things devices operating at the edge of their networks will be a key issue. Over a third (38 percent) see deployment challenges.

Additionally, 72 percent of respondents see IoT as a security risk to their company.  Also, based on current experience updating devices, 29 percent of respondents expect difficulty controlling and updating IoT devices at scale. 

source: Kollective

The volume of data generated at the edge also will be an issue for their firms, the respondents say. 

Intel Acquires Cloud-Native Edge Platform

Intel is acquiring the Smart Edge intelligent-edge platform business from Pivot Technology Solutions Inc., an IT infrastructure and service provider. 

Smart Edge is a cloud-native, scalable and secure platform for multi-access edge computing (MEC), designed to allow enterprises and communications service providers to bring cloud-like services closer to the user on the customer-premise or network edge. 

The expansion of computing in the network and at the edge is an important growth opportunity for Intel, an estimated $65 billion silicon addressable market by 2023, Intel says. 

The Smart Edge platform is built to run on Intel technologies, such as high-performing Intel Xeon Scalable processors today and, going forward, Intel Optane memory, Intel FPGAs and other accelerators. Smart Edge’s software is also highly complementary with Intel’s OpenNESS (Open Network Edge Services Software) project, Intel says.

For enterprises and service providers, Smart Edge enables new opportunities and revenue streams while reducing the total cost of ownership for intelligent edge solutions, says Intel. 

For example, retailers could deploy new personalized and location-aware in-store experiences or factories could combine 5G, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) near the edge to drive greater operational efficiencies.

IoT Device Attacks Up 9X in 2019 First Half

Kaspersky honeypots--networks of virtual copies of various internet connected devices and applications--have detected 105 million attacks on IoT devices coming from 276,000 unique IP addresses in the first six months of the year.

This figure is around nine times more than the number found in the first half of 2018, when only around 12 million attacks were spotted originating from 69,000 IP addresses. 

“Attacks on IoT devices are usually not sophisticated, but stealth-like, as users might not even notice their devices are being exploited,” Kaspersky notes.  The Mirai malware family behind 39 percent of attacks is capable of using exploits, meaning that these botnets can slip through old, unpatched vulnerabilities to the device and control it, Kaspersky notes. 

Another technique is password brute-forcing, which is the chosen method of the second most widespread malware source, Nyadrop. Nyadrop was seen in 38.6 percent of attacks.

Countries originating the most attacks in the first half of 2019 include China, with 30 percent of all attacks, Brazil with 19 percent and Egypt with 12 percent. A year ago, in the first half of  2018, Brazil lead with 28 percent of attacks, China had 14 percent and Japan was the source of 11 percent of attacks.

IoT Will Drive a Significant Portion of Global Data Traffic by 2025

If total global data consumption in 2025 is about 175 zettabytes, as IDC expects,  then IoT devices in use at that time (perhaps 42 billion IoT devices, according to IDC) might represent 79 ZB, or perhaps 45 percent of total global data generation. 

Of course, others expect far fewer IoT devices in 2025, with some estimates at about 22 billion, not 42 billion. But even using a lower 22 billion IoT device estimate, such devices will significantly outnumber smartphones and other human-used connected devices. 

source: IoT Analytics

The point is that IoT devices will drive a significant portion of global data traffic and processing loads by 2025 or so.