4170 Stillwater Drive, Duluth, Georgia 30096 | 678.576.0562 | carlos@cavazquez.com | cavazquez.com Edge Computing Won’t Kill T he Cloud With A ll the B uzz Surrounding “Edge Computing,” Y ou’d T hink It’s H ere to Bl ow T he Cloud A way There’s a new hotshot in town. Edge Computing’s the name. It’s hot I t’s hip I t is the moment “ But, what about The Cloud?” you say. “We’ve just migrated all of our data in perpetuity to the gosh darn cloud. What do we do now?” Never fear, for Edge Computing is here to make The Cloud, well, cloudier. You’ll see what we mean Edge Computing M ake s The Cloud B etter The Cloud continues to revolutionize computing and data management. We’re all moving from a world where computers and storage are set up in one place to a world where we’re surrounded by data wherever we go. All information i s accessible at any time. The whole of human knowledge is available to us if we have the right device and a network connection. You can sit in a coffee shop and look up where in the world “Sumatra” really is or check the actual height of Mount Kilimanjaro right from the summit. It’s as if all the data is just an arm’s reach away at any time. The Cloud Comes with Some Unfortunate Weaknesses The metaphor of The Cloud and the corresponding experience notwithstanding, the fact is that all data ultimately resides in one (or a few) physical locations. The location of Sumatra? It happens to be the largest island in the nation of Malaysia. However, the Wikipedia page for Sumatra is stored on a four - year - old Dell PowerEdge Server located in a data center in Ashburn, Virginia, USA. Let’s say that two people are accessing the Sumatra page simultaneously. One in Washington, D.C. and one in Medan, North Sumatra. Due to the greater physical distance from the server, user s in Sumatra would experience slower access and response times to the Wikipedia Sumatra page. Since the page is mostly text and a few small images, it’d be a tiny difference, but measurable all the same. This is called latency. Latency is experienced every time an instruction from a client device is sent to a server, and t he server sends the corresponding data back. 4170 Stillwater Drive, Duluth, Georgia 30096 | 678.576.0562 | carlos@cavazquez.com | cavazquez.com Latency Isn’t a B ig D eal , Until It Is Latency isn’t very much of a problem today when it comes to displaying conventional web pages. However, latency hampers many popular and increasingly crucial uses of the internet One of these is algorithmic trading in stocks and bonds. The milliseconds lost as instructions and data flow back between computers and servers affect transaction time, which, in the end, affects transaction amounts. In these cases, time really is money. Online games are also very latency - sensitive, with players experiencing latency as a lag b etween control inputs and corresponding gameplay events. Players with low - latency connections have a technical advantage. Latency is defined by two variables: the distance between two points on the network and the speed of light (186,000 miles per second in a vacuum). The speed of light is a constant — no way to make it faster. To improve the situation, you’ve got to bring the data closer. The “ E dge” in Edge Computing I s the Ed ge of The Cloud Edge Computing was designed to do just that. It derives its name from the act of bringing data closer to users at the edge of the network, that is to say, The Cloud. That means Edge Computing is here to add breadth to and enhance the cloud for all users. Network providers are strategically updating th eir services for latency - sensitive customers. AT&T Business’ C hief M arketing O fficer Mo Katibeh stated, “We’re creating new ways for our customers to directly access a multitude of cloud options closer to where they do business.” In the trading example from the prior section, platforms like NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange can install network nodes near major international trading centers to facilitate trading on their equities. Doing business today is doing business online. At nexVortex, we make it our business to deliver quality - based cloud communication services to serve your customers best — wherever they are — and win in the marketplace. Contact us today and let’s discuss how we can help you with your business communication needs.