Page 23 - EngineerIT September 2022

EDGE COMPUTING

new technologies, and uncover or shift workloads to achieve your business needs. Consolidating your edge also
conflicting processes between IT and opens opportunities to share and integrate data across different data streams
operational technology (OT). and applications. This will enable new applications to easily take advantage of the
existing edge data without having to build new data integration logic.
Here are three suggestions to help you As you consolidate, ensure that your edge approach leverages open
kick off your edge strategy: application programming interfaces, standards and technologies
1. Design for business outcomes. that don’t lock you into a single ecosystem or cloud
Successful edge projects An open framework. An open environment gives you the
begin with a focus on the environment gives you flexibility to implement new use cases and new
ultimate prize — the the flexibility to implement applications and to integrate new ecosystems as your
business outcomes. new use cases and new business demands change.
Clearly agree upon applications and to integrate Not only technologies need integration. Bring
and align your targeted new ecosystems as your together IT and OT organisations to compare best
business objectives business demands practices and drive your edge strategy forward. These
up-front, well before you change teams can’t be working in siloes when it comes to the
start talking about technology. edge. Encourage IT and OT to find what commonalities
If you’re in manufacturing, for they share versus focusing on what’s different. Take what IT
example, you might ask if you uniquely knows how to do well and marry that with what OT uniquely knows how
want to improve your production to do well, while leveraging common standards, practices, and a shared goal or
yields or reduce costs by a certain outcome. More mature organisations have already built these bridges and are
amount by proactively preventing successfully designing for edge outcomes together.
machine failure and the associated
downtime. 3. Plan for growth and agility.
If your project is going to require Take the long view. Plan for your initial business outcomes, but also look ahead
a large investment with an initial and plan for growth and future agility. Think about the new capabilities you
limited return, document these might need and new use cases you might want to implement for growth. For
business considerations and example, are you doing simple process control and monitoring today that you
communicate them clearly. Having may want to use deep learning for in the future? If so, make sure that your edge
specific business goals will enable infrastructure can be expanded to include the networking capacity, storage, and
you to manage expectations, accelerated compute necessary be able to do model training at the edge. Taking
measure your results as you go, an as-a-Service approach with infrastructure can give IT more control of their
and make any necessary mid- environment and make it easier to put IT resources where they can reap the
course corrections. greatest value.

2. Consolidate and integrate. Capture your edge opportunity
Look for opportunities to The edge can be anywhere. And the data that can be captured and analysed from the
consolidate applications onto a edge can deliver business-changing and life-changing outcomes. Look for a partner
single infrastructure to help your that can help you define your edge, simplify your edge computing solution through
organisation realise significant consolidation and integration, and plan for growth with a strategy designed around
savings on edge computing outcome-based benefits. Now is the time to maximise the value of the data your
initiatives. Think of your edge not business is generating and drive your business forward with actionable insights. Go
as a collection of disconnected capture your unique edge opportunity. n
devices and applications, but as
an overall system that enables The future of edge
efficient operations. Virtualisation,
containerised applications and
software-defined infrastructure are In the future, software will run everywhere; edge computing is how it will happen, and
it might not all be pretty. Change will occur across four business scenarios and involve
key building blocks for a system six technologies that enable workloads to run where they run best. In the short term,
that can enable consolidation. solutions will be plagued by a fragmented technology landscape and the retirement of
In addition to being more 3G. In the midterm, the allure of 5G will drive better edge management, orchestration,
efficient, edge consolidation and edge-to-cloud capabilities. In the long term, 5G rollout, network advancement,
provides greater flexibility. You can and smaller converged devices and infrastructure will proliferate. - Forrester
more easily reallocate resources

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