Edge-computing In a 5g Enabled World
Edge-computing In a 5g Enabled World
Mario Garcilazo
Abstract
5g is here, ready to transform all aspects of the business and consumer world. With known promises of more incredible speeds and very low latency with 5g networks, 5g will drastically change people’s lives and the way they work. By 2025, 5g networks will cover one-third of the world’s population, resulting in a profound impact on the mobile industry and end-users. With an entirely new realm of possibilities, 5g combined with edge computing will allow users to experience new form connectivity. Today, many experiences the digital world via their connected mobile devices, but 5g networks complemented with edge computing will enable users to experience the world with enhanced and augmented real-time data technologies such as AR/VR.
Why Edge-computing and 5g?
5g will transform everyone’s experience in a connected world, leading to innovation in every aspect of our lives. 5g will be the building blocks to everything that is to come. Without it, we cannot achieve the true potential of artificial intelligence(AI) or edge computing. Brand new 5g networks should be the same way we think of highway systems and the nationwide electrical system created decades ago. 5g will become the brick and mortar foundation for new technologies like edge computing.
Traditionally, businesses that have created a product are typically hosted in the cloud, referring to a centralized data center. With 5g in place, the cloud’s evolution will follow, forcing cloud computing to the edge of the network. Edge computing will enable real-time cloud computing capabilities resulting in new services and solutions to complicated problems. Even though 5g will allow higher data transfer faster speeds, let us imagine a surveillance system’s future capabilities. The camera would send large amounts of data to a centralized part in the cloud, causing congestions in the network and unnecessary latency. Instead of traditional cloud storage and processing, having edge computing capabilities learn only to send relevant information to the cloud so the user can view it (this would happen in real-time).
What is the importance of edge computing from the perspective of Organization Informatics and business decisions perspective?
The whole point of establishing 5g networks and implementing them in our everyday life is to make our connected experience a lot faster. Not only that but with millions of new devices coming online, there is a need for more bandwidth and support. Snyder, High, Butner, and Marshall state that “edge computing brings computation, data storage, and power closer to the point of action or event, reducing response time and saving bandwidth. Its revolutionary capabilities coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) enable interpretation of data patterns, learning, and decisions in real-time.” Any company looking to gain a competitive edge must harness this kind of technology to make better decisions and actions on most current data at any point in time. Snyder and his colleagues give multiple examples in their article Why organizations are betting on edge computing Insights from the edge. The one that stands out is that automotive companies turn their cars into edge devices, equipping them with internal and external sensors that generate massive amounts of data. In the long run, these automotive companies will be offered real-time decisions and actions in real-time for individual drivers behind the wheel.
A business that decides to implement edge-computing to its business models will naturally become scalable depending on its problems on a day-to-day basis. Being able to adapt will transform any company into an agile company, especially if they are already taking advantage of data centers and cloud computing. They will further optimize their business processes with flexible and reliable services to make their business brand to the next level.
Specify current challenges and problems that organizations face when implementing edge computing in their 5g networks.
Any major company that amasses significant amounts of data will face the ability to keep its networks and data secure. It will all come down to how edge computing gets deployed; if poorly implemented, it could leave an organization vulnerable. With edge computing relying on smaller processing centers and IoT devices, this will further expand the range of attacks launched to edge computing devices. Remember that these networks are widely distributed compared to their traditional network, resulting in many possible locations and forms of attacks. In Gyarmathy’s article The Benefits and potential of Edge Computing she states that organizations are hard at work implementing “compliance standards such as ISO 27001 and HIPAA/HITECH to ensure that a data center provides both resilient infrastructure and strong brand protection.”
Just like any implementation of new and cutting-edge technology, edge commuting brings varying levels of challenges. William’s blog Edge Computing: Inherent Challenges and How to Address Them provides the different challenges to the different characteristics when launching edge computing infrastructure and technologies. A wide distribution of edge computing will bring with it a scale that some organizations have never seen before. That is why Williams starts by indicating that just alone with monitoring the health and status “makes it difficult to visualize and understand the state of the entire edge environment and the impact each edge component has on others.” Williams points out other significant challenges organizations will face when implementing edge computing into their organization: performance, control, organization, and heterogeneity. Williams indicates that complexity within edge computing will increase exponentially. However, her blog also shares that edge technology requires some form of edge management. Edge computing will allow enterprises to have “intelligent software that holistically manages highly distributed heterogeneous environments… delivers simplified ‘low touch’ monitoring and administration to eliminating the need for human interaction.
The impact edge computing will have on the Internet of Things
There is no doubt that edge computing will transform how data is processed, handled, and delivered to the new generation of IoT devices. In What is Edge Computing & How Does it Impact Me? Claire Kirk emphasizes that edge computing will bring about speed, security, scalability, and reliability. In terms of speed, she states that “by processing data closer to the source and reducing the physical distance… edge computing can greatly reduce latency.” Claire also indicates that edge computing makes it more cost-effective, but it becomes much more secure. Reducing the amount of data backhauled allows most data analytics to happen at the network’s edge, making edge computing profitable and secure. All in all, edge computing will highly complement the IoT devices that sit within any 5g network.
The importance and need of edge computing to ease use and agility in data integration and data governance.
Edge computing will occur in intelligent devices, at locations where sensors and other hardware gather data and process that same data. With so many different devices in any given network, this is where edge computing proves its might. Processing data from a large pool of sources means more actionable insights based on the data gathered. The beauty behind edge computing is that computational tasks all happen close to where the data originating. In DIGI’s blog on How Edge Compute Works and Wh It’s a Game-Changer, they indicate that “data collected at the edge falls into roughly three types: 1. It needs no further action and does not need to be stored. 2. It should be retained for later analysis and or record-keeping 3. It requires an immediate response.” Simply put, all the data gathered will not be something an organization will react to. An organization that utilizes edge computing will, for the most part, be receiving essential data based on the data “heartbeat.” Their article indicates that the reduced flow of data over their network will result in significant bandwidth savings, thus lowering networking costs, especially wireless connections.
Data governance in edge computing will depend on how an organization wants its system to perform and its reliability. This means that companies will have optimized data usage, leaving data inside the system’s edge for better performance. There is no need to transmit the data over the network to a centralized cloud point with edge computing. All the computing will occur closer to the edge of the network allowing for edge devices to make their own decisions unless something critical happens. Then those devices will send outlier data to a centralized point in the cloud.
The challenge in providing Embedded BI leading to pervasive Analytics, or what is also called “analytics everywhere.”
A challenge that edge computing faces will “where does data analysis happen?” In IBM’s paper Analytics at the Edge, they state that two factors dictate the answer to that question. It all depends on “how critical is it to analyze the data in real-time and whether additional analysis needs to be done with that data. Then there is that storage requirement(or not) to meet business and jurisdictional compliance requirements.” the IBM authors state that sending data to a centralized point in the cloud is not the answer because most of the data stores in the cloud are never analyzed. Instead, it just stays in a database or bucket.
The Analytics at the Edge article gives a great example of this. The example provided is regarding a security camera that captures video. The video sends data to corresponding edge computing devices to analyze and process the data. If a collision occurs, the edge devices will detect and analyze the data to take the necessary actions. This could result in deploying the appropriate personal. This is the power of edge computing and the analytics behind such technology.
The need to provide solutions that include performing ad hoc analyses and applying powerful analytics to help the organization stay on track and achieve business growth. The issue of Cloud data warehousing and Cloud Analytics.
An essential requirement of edge computing is improving the data computations by lowering the latency of responses from devices in the network. Analytics at the Edge makes valid points regarding the ability of any organization to scale up or down. With thousands, if not millions of devices at the edge, there will be a higher strain on data analytics resources. Right now, data is exponentially growing in comparison to an organization’s ability to process and handle such data produced. With edge computing, there will come edge analytics that “enables organizations to scale out their processing and analytics capabilities by decentralizing to the locations where the data is collected.”
Lastly, in Rob High’s youtube video on edge computing, he states that edge computing is not meant to replace centralized data analytics. Both will come to exist in a hybrid fashion to deliver deeper insights into any organization’s business model. The main goal of edge computing, according to Rob High, is to provide real-time business insights. Thus 5g combined with edge computing is a must. Neither one of them can exist without being complimented in some form or way.
References
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Gyarmathy, K. (2020, November 13). The benefits and potential of edge computing. Retrieved March 21, 2021, from https://www.vxchnge.com/blog/the-5-best-benefits-of-edge-computing
Kirk, C. (2021, February 01). What is edge computing & How does it impact me? Retrieved March 21, 2021, from https://www.lightedge.com/blog/what-is-edge-computing-how-does-it-impact-
me/#:~:text=Reliability,affecting%20local%20customers%20or%20businesses
High, R. (Director). (2019, October 01). What is edge computing? [Video file]. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://youtu.be/cEOUeItHDdo
Q. (2021, February 12). What is 5g: Everything you need to know About 5G: 5G faq. Retrieved March 21, 2021, from https://www.qualcomm.com/5g/what-is-5g
Rao, T. (2021, January 29). 5G and edge: Accenture. Retrieved March 21, 2021, from https://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/business-functions-blog/5g-and-edge-unlocking-new-possibilities
Snyder, S., High, R., Butner, K., & Marshall, A. (2020, May). Why organizations are betting on edge computing. Retrieved March 21, 2021, from https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/repor
Williams, D. (n.d.). Edge computing: Inherent challenges and how to address them. Retrieved March 21, 2021, from https://www.rfcode.com/blog/edge-computing-inherent-challenges-and-how-to-address-them
