Edge cloud: what you need to know

The IT industry never stands still. While some innovations quickly fade from view, some are fast accepted as mainstream thought. Just look at how the cloud moved from hype to reality in little more than a decade.

There’s a common theme in a lot of innovation: there’s a concerted drive away from the data centre. We’ve seen it with the move to the public cloud, we’ve seen it with the proliferation of IoT and we’ve seen it with the emergence of security shifted away from its central point.

The arrival of edge cloud fits into this philosophy: part of the definite drive to move data processing away from the centre and place closer to the point where it has been generated. There are many manifestations of this within industry: in media, in power supply or other utilities, indeed any application where companies are processing information far away from a centralised office.

If you like, it can be thought of moving from a heavily centralised data centre to a series of data centres situated around the perimeter of a corporate infrastructure – a complete turnaround from the traditional approach to IT.

Compute resources are placed physically closer to end-users. This enables better experiences and the ability to serve new applications to an audience in a particular country or region.

Realigning infrastructure for the future

And edge cloud is serious business: companies are making heavy investments in this area: the size of the market last year was just $3.5 billion but, according to a report from Grand View Research, that’s expected to grow to $43.4 billion by 2027. And this growth will be driven by an increasing slice of IT budget – about 30 per cent according to research from Analysys Mason.

With such commitment, it’s plain that edge cloud is not some sort of fad but a complete realignment of IT infrastructure. It’s important to remember that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to edge cloud – there are a lot of different elements at play. There’s one central theme however, all of them will involve some element of hybrid cloud as there’s a tie-up between processing at the edge and the delivery of a variety of resources.

New solutions to old problems

Despite the relative newness of edge cloud, Cloudhelix has already made big strides in rolling out the technology. We’ve made our name being flexible and responsive to customer needs. Both of these are key aspects of the drive to edge cloud – the whole point of the technology is to be more responsive to changes in the process. It enables organisations to react almost instantaneously to events, no matter where they are within the infrastructure.

What’s needed is a solution like our The Converged Cloud Stack which can provide a significant boost to computing capability at the edge of the corporate infrastructure. It standardises the deployment and delivery of edge projects, simplifying things for the internal IT team.

That’s only part of the story, however, by moving away from a centralised facility, businesses will be able to design infrastructure better. There may be a need to have an edge device in a particular geographic location one month and in another, the next month. The modern enterprise needs to be able to adapt to changes – not so much a business transformation, but a series of smaller transformations.

In order to do this, businesses have to choose a partner with a track record of delivering customised solutions that can address problems in a timely manner. In today’s fast-moving environment, there is a requirement to design, supply and provision a new service in a matter of weeks, ensuring that their customers are fully on top of any changes in the situation.

Some of the common issues with edge cloud we regularly see include:

• Deploying a consistent management plane across a variety of clouds and locations
• Procuring, managing and maintaining infrastructure remotely (rather than needing IT staff at every edge location)
• Keeping and managing data at the edge for regulatory or data processing reasons.
• With our long tradition of delivering highly bespoke solutions within tight time constraints – as well as an in-depth understanding of maintaining an edge environment – we’re perfectly placed to deliver on this.

This could be a need for a temporary office or for a company looking to establish a legal presence in a particular country, or as a way of working when the public cloud isn’t suitable (e.g. for data sovereignty reasons) – there are so many scenarios. The Converged Cloud Stack exists to make these projects simple, and overcome the challenges along the way. By providing the hardware, the delivery of a production-ready stack and a range of managed services, it’s a way of working that will assist any company looking to process data at the edge – and without any requirement to make any capital investment up-front.

The converged solution is only part of the story: what we bring to the table is a deep understanding of the issues, and a tried and tested deployment methodology to standardise each deployment. We wanted enterprises to be able to order a second, third, fourth or fifth Stack to the same technical specifications, knowing it arrives production-ready in thirty days or less.

Equally, the Stack is more than just a hardware solution that arrives fast: it comes with consultancy baked in to deliver the end-to-end project, ensuring our clients are heading in the right direction. Edge is still a very new technology and not all businesses will have staff who are skilled or experienced enough to talk about all the nuances of it, especially not in each location around the world where an appliance is required.

As with any potential solution, the proof is in the pudding. Companies considering edge will want to be assured they’re not stumbling into the unknown without the right guidance. Just check out our case study from a project in Dubai to see our expertise in action.

The world is changing fast and the modern company needs to change with it. The move to edge cloud is just one of the ways in which businesses will react to the changing climate and the need to be more responsive. When so much IT expenditure in the future is going to be concentrated on the edge, as much as 30% by 2025 predicts Gartner, it’s important to have a partner you can trust. Get in touch today for a conversation with our experts to learn how we can make it work for you.