Opportunities and Pitfalls of IT Architectures for Edge Computing

Abstract

Networks and data centres are under a lot of stress due to the rapid growth of connected devices and the significant amount of data that they produce. While data centres are struggling with heavy workloads, the cloud-native IT solutions underutilise the increasingly powerful clients. By bringing computational capabilities closer to the edge, the Edge Computing direction offers a way to alleviate the pressure on data centres, reduce network traffic, and opens the way for novel applications that would take full advantage of the benefits it brings. Edge Computing can also supplement existing applications by giving them the resources to run new, more complex operations, or improve existing ones partially. Edge applications are less reliant on the cloud, and provide more stability and customisation to globally distributed systems.