Edge reality check: What we've learned about scaling secure, smart infrastructure

Enterprises are pushing cloud resources back to the edge after years of centralization. Even as major incumbents such as Google, Microsoft, and AWS pull more enterprise workloads into massive, centralized hyperscalers, use cases at the edge increasingly require nearby infrastructure—not a long hop to a centralized data center—to take advantage of the torrents of real-time data generated by IoT devices, sensor networks, smart vehicles, and a panoply of newly connected hardware.

Not long ago, the enterprise edge was a physical one. The central data center was typically located in or very near the organization’s headquarters. When organizations sought to expand their reach, they wanted to establish secure, speedy connections to other office locations, such as branches, providing them with fast and reliable access to centralized computing resources. Vendors initially sold MPLS, WAN optimization, and SD-WAN as “branch office solutions,” after all.

Lesson one: Understand your legacy before locking in your future

The networking model that connects centralized cloud resources to the edge via some combination of SD-WAN, MPLS, or 4G reflects a legacy HQ-branch design. However, for use cases such as facial recognition, gaming, or video streaming, old problems are new again. Latency, middle-mile congestion, and the high cost of bandwidth all undermine these real-time edge use cases.