Edge computing shifts IT's gravity

In this guest blog post, Satyam Vaghani VP/GM, IoT & AI, Nutanix discusses the way IT will need to change to support edge computing.

The rise of the edge will require a redistribution of the centre of gravity, as well as a major shift in compute paradigm from mainly “human-oriented” at the core (applications like email, surfing the web, social media and so on) to predominantly “machine-oriented” processing – as when collecting sensor data and using AI and analytics techniques to convert raw data into business insights. For example, enterprises will need to manage security and infrastructure lifecycle at thousands of mission critical datacentres, as well as hundreds or thousands of applications, most of which will require weekly, or even daily, refresh. It also calls for a much more distributed and interconnected approach between the core and hundreds if not thousands of edges to make sure they work as a holistic whole.

Take a holistic approach

In just a few years we’ve seen devices deployed at the network edge increase almost exponentially to process more data than all the public and private clouds of the world combined. Managing the volume, velocity, and variety of data at industrial scale, and refining it at the edge to get actionable insights, often under tight time constraints, are key problems which, as yet, nobody has fully solved although many are trying and making good progress.

IoT is never an edge-only or a cloud-only problem. Most IoT apps span the edge and the cloud with major implications for the security of both, not least because of the sheer size of the potential attack surface. Nothing can be assumed; new and innovative threats are being released all the time, making robust edge security with minimal oversight at the core an absolute must.

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