´In the SpotLight´ is a series of conversations by Arnaud Bacros, General Manager for Belgium and Luxembourg at Dell Technologies, with his colleagues from the Benelux region. In this issue, he speaks with Mattias Denys, Technical Sales Manager DCS Team Belux at Dell Technologies. Denys focuses especially on edge computing.
Every location where data is created can be considered an edge. This is the simplest explanation to understand edge computing. It means that IT departments are introducing infrastructure at the edge of the network, to make sure that data generated there can be analyzed and processed close to the source. And, more importantly, that organizations can process that data without latency.
In this video, Mattias gives a short historical overview of edge computing. “In the past, we used to have centralized environments, like mainframes. This transitioned to client-server based, decentralized computing, and then the cloud came around.”
Nowadays, many CIOs decide to store data and applications in the cloud. “What we are seeing right now,” Mattias explains in the video, “is that customers ask us to move the infrastructure closer to the data, closer to the edge, in order to avoid latency.”
Garner claims that in two years from now, more than 50% of the data will be generated in the edge. And in 2025 this could reach 70%. Dell Technologies therefore, predicts that customers will require hardware and software that can run in the edge.
Challenges
The lifecycle of the edge environment is different from the more traditional ecosystems. Providing security is more challenging than it was before, and organizations don’t have IT staff onsite.
As well as this, Mattias recognizes more challenges. “Sometimes the location of the edge is in dusty spaces. In that case, customers need ruggedized devices.” Another challenge is the power and cooling of the edge infrastructure since organizations will not always have a temperature-controlled environment. The most important challenge however remains security. Organizations need to make sure that security is built in.
Most companies have data in datacenters and in the cloud, but a lot of data is generated in the edge. In this video Mattias Denys tells everything about the challenges of edge computing and the solutions Dell Technologies delivers.