The Rise of the Autonomous Edge TM

I want to spend a minute discussing the rise of not only Edge computing, but specifically the Autonomous Edge.

As massive amounts of structured and unstructured data are being generated by billions of devices today, with this trend expecting to rise dramatically, it can bring data processing in the cloud to a crawl. However, with the advent of Autonomous Edgeä Computing, hope is on the way!

Currently there is a tendency to think that all data processing happens in the cloud. However, the Edge (defined as anything outside the cloud) is expected to play a key role, especially for those use cases requiring real-time, low-latency processing, such as autonomous driving, factory automation, oil exploration and healthcare.

Specifically, with Autonomous Edgeä, compute processing will shift from centralized back to distributed computing architecture (also known as Fog Computing). This evolution is made possible by the wide acceptance of Cloud Computing principles over the past many years, including Self-service; Broad network access; and Resource pooling.

The result is that a compute node at the end device, the gateway or the Fog node, is autonomous, intelligent, processing-capable, offloading real-time data processing, from the cloud. It can decide whether to process the data locally, or send to the cloud for deeper level of processing, and to develop new Rules, Patterns templates and Learning models. In addition, there is need for protocol translation, and data compression at the Edge.

New evolving technologies in compute, storage and the underlying networks will enable such capabilities. These include NFV, SDN, 5G, and NVMe over Fiber. In addition, the availability of Open systems (HW & SW), new domain-specific ASICs, including machine learning, high-density, fast access Flash devices will make it possible to apply cloud computing technology at the Edge. The result will affect where data analytics need to be optimally handled, with the Edge playing a key role in this newly distributed computing architecture.

However, challenges remain … chief of which is security. It remains to be seen if this can be addressed with the new Blockchain technology!