The Future of Distributed Computing with Cloud, Edge, and Colocation

August 8, 2018

For today’s enterprises, the need to transmit and process huge amounts of data requires a more efficient means than just moving it to the cloud or a data center can accommodate. As these huge data sets come from IoT sensor data, high definition content, and mission critical apps among others, edge computing, the cloud, and colocation must all play a part. That’s why leading colocation data centers are making the need for edge computing another part of their colocation and cloud management services.

Edge computing serves as the decentralized extension of the networks, data center infrastructures, or the cloud. Consequently, the edge can be a combination of virtualization, cloud, and colocation data center solutions that addresses the need for a decentralized data center or cloud. This growing trend can be seen in a recent Gartner article stating that the current 10 percent of enterprise-generated data created and processed outside a traditional centralized data center or cloud will reach 50 percent by 2022.

This edge computing approach is all about placing decentralized computing power closer to the point where data is generated. This addresses the needs of a wide variety of use cases across industries such as meeting the needs of building management, IoT, data distribution, application delivery, and complex-event processing among others.

While the deployment of small, branch, data center locations is most closely associated with edge computing, intelligent data center and colocation solutions are also important cornerstones of its use. That puts colocation data centers that are also cloud managed service providers squarely in the mix of multifaceted solutions to address transport needs.

For data that needs to be processed close to its source, many businesses will take advantage of colocation data centers to augment their edge computing ecosystem for core applications and cloud native apps This becomes possible based on the cloud management services and the close relationship that leading colocation data centers have with cloud providers.

Data-intensive needs are prime examples of use cases where network data transfers to the cloud are impractical due to the huge data sets. This also holds true for cloud to point-of-use data access where volume, costs, and bandwidth issues also make it impractical.

The use cases for edge, cloud and colocation combinations are wide and varied including high-definition content delivery and especially IoT networks for smart homes, buildings, factories and even cities. Colocation providers like Telehouse and their New York and NJ facilities are poised to support smart cities like the emergence of the “New” New York that sits at the forefront of this smart city trend.

In the case of IoT and IIoT for industrial and energy sensor grids, it’s about moving huge data sets generated by devices and systems at the source to a central location for processing. Those colocation data centers that can provide cloud management services are best poised to deliver this new edge-to-core network architecture that melds virtualization, networking, edge computing capabilities and the cloud.

Edge colocation for IoT as one example becomes possible for businesses that create relationships with Tier 1 and Tier 2 colocation facilities to create an edge access grid that makes real-time data access possible. The evolution of edge computing in the IoE era is still at the early growth stages but will accelerate quickly in the next few years. In this scenario, edge data centers and cloud computing service providers in the form of colocation data centers will also play their part for certain IoT data and application access needs.