The continued development of edge computing through partnerships between tech and telco companies
Today I watched the Google Cloud Next 2020 conference session on harnessing 5G and edge computing. Google are going to provide enterprises with the ability to consume 5G/LTE edge computing as a fully packaged solution. These solutions will allow organisations to move infrastructure from centralised locations to the “edge”. It is expected that the solutions will be delivered based on a cloud consumption model, meaning there is no capex investment for the consumer of the solution.
If you’re not familiar with the concept, edge computing it is a distributed computing solution that brings computation and data storage closer to the location where it is needed, to improve response times and save bandwidth. This is capable of delivering very low latency as the compute happens nearer to the requests, thereby improving the end user experience.
The edge computing options will utilise Google Cloud's core capabilities in Kubernetes, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and data analytics. In the presentation they shared a smart retail-based case study, allowing a shopper to use their phone to see pricing and availability of an item though use of augmented reality, simply pointing their camera at the item of interest. As well as providing answer to questions the purchaser may have, the application would then switch seamlessly to a purchase and payment system. The edge computing enables the globally distributed retail provider the use of a private 5G or LTE network with edge solutions without having to increase their corporate or local infrastructure.
It will be interesting to see how security will be built into these highly distributed systems. I gave some thought to this in an article I wrote back in April 2020; “Considerations for Proactive Cyber Security Measures When Deploying 5G”.
When this is in place the other use case is use of low latency cloud PC’s as a SaaS solution. In another session I saw how this could allow a user to have access to a cloud based Windows 10 desktop with the low latency allowing you to experience the performance of physical desktop. This solution also avoids the issues met when deploying Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), which can be slow and difficult to provision. The cloud PC allows security to be applied at the data centre, instantly available, with no need for a 3 yearly refresh cycle, with an ability to change the configuration as the users’ needs changes. This also deals with issues such as need for cooling of high end workstations, through to an identical experience whether in an office, at home or on the road.
