The growth of connected devices is seeing a fundamental change in how people engage with each other and businesses in the digital world. But for this to be truly effective, the existing way of using cloud infrastructure must change. Instead, a decentralized approach will be vital if existing network hardware is to evolve into more powerful edge computing devices better suited to the requirements of this dynamic landscape.

Today, all the most popular consumer and enterprise applications are hosted in data centers. From Google and Facebook to YouTube and Instagram, this cloud-centric methodology has become essential for enabling our connected lifestyles. Underpinning this is a hierarchical client-server architecture that sees most servers located in data centers scattered around the globe. For years, this has been the optimum way of hosting applications that provide access to content and information to client devices (e.g.: smartphones or tablets.) However, new trends point to this quickly becoming a less efficient way of managing data.

Changing landscape

Firstly, there has been an explosion of computing devices and embedded computing in all things. This has grown the ‘edge’, often referred to as the Internet of Things, where devices are connected to centralized servers. However, with current smartphones having more computational power than the servers of just a decade ago, the edge is becoming more powerful.

Secondly, the advent of social media on mobile devices, orders-of-magnitude more personal multimedia content are generated on these edge devices. People are creating and sharing content faster than what major studios and broadcasters are hosting on central servers in the cloud. This is seeing most of the data generated on (edge) devices being sent back to the central cloud for processing and to facilitate sharing.

The third trend is the decomposition of solutions. The emergence of microservices and their automated deployment are contributing to a serverless back-end environment. Instead, the cloud is used to scale resources to fit demand either through volume or geography.

A new way

The current client-server approach makes central cloud resources and network connectivity the bottleneck for future growth. Sending data from hundreds of billions of client devices to tens of millions of centralized cloud servers wastes bandwidth and energy and it has serious social and economic implications.

Furthermore, developers are reliant on cloud service providers who have access to the apps and the data stored or processed in their servers. Essentially, a handful of large companies have control over the majority of consumer and enterprise data. And despite all the sophisticated security measures, storing data and hosting applications on third-party resources exposes the owners of the information to risks.

Instead, enabling any computing device to act as a cloud server when it makes sense to do so can reduce this reliance on third parties. Additionally, microservices will move to the device instead of being hosted in a centralized server, making them faster and more flexible to changing user requirements.

Edge power

By acting as servers, these edge devices can perform many of the functions of the cloud. This will result in the creation of a cloud edge that is significantly more powerful than the centralized cloud.

For example, there are currently over 80 million Sony PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles in peoples’ homes. This represents more than 600 million processor cores and 40,000 petabytes of storage. In comparison, this is much larger computing, storage, and memory resources in the aggregate than the entire Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure.

And the PS4 is only one type of device. That is not even accounting for the billions of PCs, set-top-boxes, game consoles, streaming players, routers, smartphones, tablets, and other computing devices that can potentially act as cloud servers.

The benefits of such a distributed edge computing architecture are phenomenal. From reduced cloud hosting costs and communication bandwidth to improved network efficiency, reduced energy consumption and carbon emission, the list is almost endless. Moreover, increased data privacy and providing consumers and enterprises with better control over their data are perhaps the most compelling benefits given the market environment today.

Software-driven

Cynics might argue that a change as fundamental as this will require significant investment in overhauling network infrastructure. Yet, if a software-driven model is adopted, no change will be needed to the low-level design of edge devices.

All that is required is a downloadable software development kit (SDK) that runs on top of existing operating systems. No changes to hardware or operating systems are necessary. Instead, developers have the power to decentralize the existing cloud infrastructure.

Ultimately, a distributed computing environment will provide consumers with more control over their personal data, minimize the cost of hosting and delivery of application and services, and improve network performance.

Decentralization is the next revolution in cloud computing and an essential element to drive the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

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