Jamie Scott, Chief Technology Officer
Edge computing is reshaping IT and business computing. The global edge computing market was valued at USD 7.43 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at an annual rate of 38.9% from 2022 to 2030. It’s a trend that can be attributed to the massive growth of the cloud and the hybrid work environment. Today’s modern workers need better campus Wi-Fi to enable work-from-anywhere at the office – including the canteen and boardroom, better security at the edge, improved document management systems, better access control and more. All of these requirements are enabled by enterprise networking. Edge computing, a distributed computing framework, brings enterprise applications closer to data sources such as IoT devices or local edge servers. Recognising that edge computing is expected to offer significant growth prospects in the next few years, Tarsus Distribution is rapidly expanding its enterprise computing offering in line with this trend.
Edge computing enables different stakeholders to maintain IT infrastructure, networking, software development, traffic distribution, and service management. This can be achieved while also combining software, hardware, and networking architecture, to enable streamlining of masses of enterprise generated data. Simply, it is an enabler of the intelligent edge that businesses are seeking in order to remain competitive.
One of the key benefits of edge computing in the current environment, is that it addresses infrastructure challenges such as bandwidth limitations, excess latency and network congestion. Because of the number of devices connected to the internet, and the volume of data
being produced by those devices and used by businesses, traditional data centre infrastructures can no longer accommodate this growth. The enormous volume of data also puts massive strain on the internet itself, which is being subjected to congestion and disruption.
Traditionally, data is collected on the edge of the network and transmitted back to centralised servers for processing. Edge computing takes storage and computing resources from the data centre and moves those resources to the point where the data is generated.
Through locating key processing functions closer to end users, edge computing radically reduces latency. By bringing compute power to the edge of the network or device, it allows for faster data processing, increased bandwidth and ensured data autonomy – all of which creates a far more consistent experience for end users.
Recent cyberattacks on South Africa have shown how vulnerable the country is to cybercriminals and ransomware assaults.
Moreover, when it comes to hybrid work, security is critical. In South Africa, work-from-anywhere continues to grow as loadshedding forces workers to seek out power from locations such as shopping malls and coffee shops, alternating between mobile phones, tablets and laptops across potentially unsecured public Wi-Fi hotspots.
Edge computing keeps data closer to its source. With edge computing, there are additional opportunities to implement and ensure data security. Although cloud providers specialise in ensuring the safety and security of data, once it leaves the edge and travels back to the cloud or data centre, data becomes vulnerable. By terminating the connection to these devices locally, data crisscrossing the network back to the cloud or data centre can be secured through encryption, and the edge deployment itself can be reinforced against hackers and other malicious events.
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