The Intelligent Edge
The intelligent edge is the concept of collecting data at the "edge" — where the physical world and the digital world meet — and analyzing and processing it in real time to deliver immediate insight and control.
What is the intelligent edge?
The intelligent edge is used in a wide variety of places, including manufacturing plants, smart buildings, farms, wind farms, sports stadiums, and autonomous vehicles. These places are the "edge," where data is generated and action takes place, and they are also where Internet of Things (IoT) devices are installed. Traditionally, data analysis was performed in the cloud or in on-premises data centers, but the intelligent edge makes it possible to perform that analysis at the edge, enabling real-time insight and control.
The 3 Cs of the Intelligent Edge: Connect, Compute, and Control
- Connect: Devices, people, and things are connected over a network, making data exchange possible and generating new data in the process.
- Compute: The generated data is computed and analyzed, granting applications access to it and providing deep insight into connected devices and environments.
- Control: Based on these insights, immediate action can be taken — controlling edge devices and things when necessary, or influencing the company's business activities.
Examples of the Intelligent Edge in Action
Retail: Retailers can connect beverages on store shelves with digital price displays to track inventory and gauge how fast items are selling. By combining outside temperature with data from other stores, they can adjust prices in real time to maximize sales.
Smart buildings: In large office buildings, wireless location services and smartphone apps help employees easily find meeting rooms or printers.
Telecommunications and media: Communications service providers deploy edge computing systems at businesses and homes to save network bandwidth and improve the customer experience.
Why Edge Computing?
- Minimized latency: Reduces delays in tasks that require real-time insight.
- Bandwidth savings: Processing data at the edge minimizes network bandwidth usage.
- Cost savings: Data transfer costs are reduced.
- Stronger security: Processing data locally reduces security vulnerabilities during transmission.
- Less redundancy: Transmitting only the data that is needed reduces unnecessary duplication.
- Improved reliability: Reduces data loss caused by connectivity problems.
- Regulatory compliance: Data can be managed in compliance with local regulations.
The Future of the Intelligent Edge
The intelligent edge will generate ever more diverse data through connections among things, people, and environments, and it will become increasingly sophisticated. This will enable more accurate predictions and diagnostics, and predictive analytics will bring greater precision to areas such as equipment failure prediction and consumption pattern analysis.
Companies can use the intelligent edge to increase efficiency, improve customer experience, and realize cost savings, and an IoT strategy allows them to take advantage of the intelligent edge's benefits even more effectively.
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