Edge Cloud Computing

Edge devices are growing in number and computing power. From mobile phones and laptops to connected cars, gaming systems and IoT devices, edge technologies are increasingly generating larger volumes of data and requiring more significant bandwidth. Attempting to manage this growth and data with traditional Cloud technology – where data is moved to and processed in centralized data centers – is becoming increasingly problematic. Challenges include:

• Increasing latency. Sending data from edge devices to a data center and back significantly increases latency, which is unacceptable in use cases like self-driving cars where a millisecond delay in response can be dangerous.
• Reliability issues. Enterprises may not be able to count on mission-critical or time-critical applications because of latency and bandwidth issues.
• Rising costs. Moving massive amounts of data at high speed can quickly increase expenses.
• Lack of bandwidth. There simply may not be enough bandwidth to handle the sheer volume of data generated by edge resources.
• Increasing risks. The growing amount of data sent between edge devices and data center locations increases the attack surface.
  

To manage data generated by edge devices more efficiently, many enterprises are turning to technology that decentralizes processing, shifting processing responsibilities to edge devices. With edge Cloud infrastructure, organizations have more latitude to decide where a specific workload is best processed.

The challenge for IT teams is that as enterprises incorporate more Cloud services and technologies, the task of managing them can become incredibly complex. Each Cloud platform has its own management framework and processes. Without consistent tools, operations and infrastructure, managing multiple Cloud resources can easily add cost and complexity while limiting innovation.

To successfully reap the benefits of edge Cloud technologies and other Cloud products, enterprises need solutions that can unify public, private and edge Cloud resources on a single hybrid platform. That’s where Dell Technologies can help.

• VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail, a turnkey platform, that provides software-defined services and Cloud management tools for running traditional or containerized apps in all Cloud environments. Dell Technologies’s hyperconverged infrastructure platform is highly scalable and can support the most demanding workloads and applications.
• Validated Designs, a collection of best-of-breed Dell Technologies solutions delivered as pre-tested infrastructure with extensive deployment guidance. Validated Designs lets IT teams meet the varied demands of legacy applications and demanding workloads by building hybrid Cloud infrastructure with independent scaling of storage and compute.
• Data Center as a Service (DCaaS), a fully managed subscription-based solution. This offering combines the speed and flexibility of public Cloud with the security and control of private Cloud infrastructure, providing robust on-premises IaaS capabilities at core data center and edge Cloud locations.
• Support for all major Cloud partners, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, along with 4,200 additional Cloud providers.
  

As a leading Cloud company, Dell Technologies provides solutions that enable enterprises to:

• Simplify management of public, private and edge Cloud resources with a common set of tools and consistent infrastructure.
• Streamline Cloud migration by providing familiar tools and models that reduce errors and create efficiencies for administrators as they move workloads to and between Cloud platforms.
• Increase speed to market with the ability to access the right resources on the right Cloud at the right time.
• Reduce costs with the ability to rely on flexible consumption and payment options across Clouds, minimizing expense and creating cost predictability.
• Improve Cloud security with a single security framework that covers public, private and edge Clouds.
  

What is an edge Cloud?
An edge Cloud architecture shifts processing power from centralized data centers to clients or devices at the edge of the network. Rather than requiring edge devices to transmit raw data back to data centers for processing, an edge Cloud architecture keeps the responsibility for processing data within edge devices like cell phones, laptops, IoT devices, gaming equipment and self-driving cars. With an effective edge Cloud, millions of devices at the edge of the network can execute processing tasks that are typically only performed in very large data centers.

What are the benefits of edge Cloud computing?
By distributing processing tasks away from data centers to edge locations, edge Cloud computing enables more low-latency experiences on edge devices. This is particularly important for applications like self-driving cars, where a delay in processing data could be a life-threatening event. Edge Cloud computing also can help to reduce costs by minimizing the amount of data required to be transferred over long distances. And edge Cloud computing helps to reduce bandwidth requirements and improve the reliability of edge applications.