For probably the last 10 years now, Cloud Technology has been considered the future of business. We have seen the technology grow and become a part of the cultural language of the 21st century – how many jokes on TV and on film do we hear about older generations confusing the digital cloud with a literal cloud? If you have an iPhone, your photos and videos are probably saved to Apple’s iCloud, and if your school or your work uses Microsoft 365, then every single application you use in it has been built to be fully integrated with the Microsoft Cloud.
But recently there has been more and more mainstream recognition of a new type of technology that is being talked about in the same way that Cloud technology was talked about a decade ago. This technology is, of course, Edge Computing. If you haven’t heard of it, this is one thing that a good, proactive Business IT Support London Solution can do for your business – to provide you with insights and suggestions like this to always keep you one step ahead of your competition.
But what is Edge Computing? It is not a new style of technology to replace the Cloud, but a technology that enhances the Cloud by providing a new approach to building and distributing the infrastructure.
For example, Cloud Computing relies on the entire infrastructure being grouped more or less in the same place and is closely linked to datacentres – so all of the computation (e.g. processing of data) occurs close to the Cloud, far away from the end user. On the other hand, Edge technology distributes that infrastructure so that the parts of the infrastructure concerned with computation are closer to the end-user. This results in much faster communication between the Cloud and the end-user.
Edge Computing may seem like an exciting new technology; in many ways it is, but it is actually already being implemented and you are already seeing the effects of it. One of the main ways in which it is being used is with streaming services like Netflix – as a global streaming service, Netflix has to deal with a high network infrastructure load; performing all the computation needed to deliver their service up in the cloud would result in a very slow service. Edge computing enables streaming services to deliver a quick and smooth service.
There is no true answer as to which is better, Edge or Cloud computing. The reality is that they are most effective when used together. But there may be an answer as to which is more suitable for which purpose.
In the context of business, Cloud computing is ideal for times when large amounts of data storage is required – companies that deal with aggregate data, or which hold their customers data (such as financial or legal firms) will benefit from utilising Cloud computing. Additionally, Cloud computing enables many services, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Desktop as a Service (DaaS). We’ve seen how specific IT Support North London Solutions take this kind of service into consideration. These types of services are useful for SMB organisations with small offices, or no offices at all; as well as organisations that want to hire talent from across the world.
Whereas Edge computing, which focuses on provided better speed of communication between the cloud and endpoint, would be best suited for organisations that require low latency. Having someone in your IT Support Team who can provide you with insights like this and how to best use this kind of software is always an advantage, think about it as though you have your own Microsoft Experts, or Azure Expert on hand at all times to help guide your business in the right way. Organisations that utilize Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which need to collect data quickly and efficiently will benefit from an Edge infrastructure.