How Moving Cloud Operations to the Edge Improves the Customer Experience

Moving cloud operations to the edge is seen as the next step in delivering a faster, content-rich experience to customers.

According to analyst firm IDC, there will be an 800 percent increase in applications running on edge infrastructure by 2023.

“Organizations that have embarked on a digital business journey have realized that a more decentralized approach is required to address digital business infrastructure requirements,” noted Santhosh Rao, Gartner senior research director, in 2018.

“As the volume and velocity of data increases, so too does the inefficiency of streaming all this information to a data center for processing.”

The introduction of 5G is seen as the catalyst for edge computing, because of the high bandwidth, low latency that the networking technology provides. 

For providers, using edge infrastructure improves network elasticity, meaning networks can quickly move resources more effectively to meet demand. 

It is also seen as the enabler of many emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things, self-driving vehicles, virtual reality, and drones. 

For businesses, edge infrastructure enhances real-time analytics by pulling data from sensors and other sources every few seconds.

What are the benefits of Edge computing?

“Edge computing is made necessary by harsh realities of physics, but subsequently enables wondrous new applications,” said Garner analyst Bob Gill in a webinar. 

“We’re talking about letting things run where they run best, about advances in endpoints and also increased needs and demands of those endpoints. Increases in expectations, increases in data density, speed volume, that’s what’s driving us toward this need for edge computing.”

IDC sees connected oil field exploration, freight monitoring, and public safety response as the three areas with the highest propensity for edge deployment. 

The three major cloud providers – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform – have all added edge locations for businesses, realizing the opportunities presented by the proliferation of 5G services in the next few years.

View IDC’s InfoBrief on the edge cloud below or download the PDF.

See also: Edge Application Technology Benefits All Industries