{"id":978,"date":"2019-10-16T09:55:56","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T09:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=978"},"modified":"2019-10-16T09:55:58","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T09:55:58","slug":"living-on-the-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/10\/16\/living-on-the-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"Living on the edge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Nathan Shipps on Unsplash\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With data- and AI-driven development taking over the world, it may easily seem that the cloud is the place where everything happens. This is where the data is stored and analyzed, where the machine- and deep-learning models run and where all the value resides. The perspective of people living in this world is that all the connected devices in the world only have the role of collecting data and uploading it to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is, however, a second development ongoing \nthat\u2019s easily missed: in an \u2018internet of things\u2019 world it\u2019s what happens\n on the edge that\u2019s the most interesting right now. Over the last weeks,\n I have been exposed and have talked to several companies that develop \nproducts that live on the edge of the network. These products are \nincreasingly powerful from a computing and storage perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using\n heterogeneous hardware including GPUs, FPGAs and ASICs, these companies\n are able to develop extremely powerful solutions that, at the same \ntime, are very efficient from an energy usage and physical space \nperspective. The solutions may lack some of the flexibility and \nscalability that cloud solutions provide, but at the same time, have \nmajor advantages in terms of security, reliable real-time behavior and \ncontext awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting on this, I realized how naive the \ncloud-centric view actually is. Connected devices such as cameras, \nradars, mobile phones, radio base stations and autonomous cars generate \nenormous amounts of data, sometimes to the tune of gigabytes per second.\n Sending all this data into the cloud for processing is simply \nimpossible with today\u2019s technology. And even if tomorrow\u2019s technology \nwould be able to support it, the data generation by edge devices will \nhave grown with an order of magnitude before that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n natural response would be to say that we should focus on local \ncomputation and storage of data and the use of local AI models, instead.\n As usual, however, the answer is more complicated than that. To \nparaphrase Jim Collins, rather than the tyranny of the \u201cor\u201d, we should \nfocus on the beauty of the \u201cand\u201d. Certain types of computation, storage \nand AI models function best on the edge whereas others are best located \non an on-premise server or in the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This leads to, at least, \nthree implications. First, many companies experience a situation that \nfeatures and capabilities of their systems are becoming horizontalized, \nmeaning that a new feature or capability requires functionality on the \nedge, the on-premise server and in the cloud. It\u2019s no longer localized \nto one of these systems. Few architects and business development folks \nare well versed in all of them but the skill set to reason about the \nend-to-end deployment of functionality will be increasingly important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second,\n connected edge devices need to be able to support the constant \nevolution of functionality that\u2019s native to the cloud. A solution where \nthe cloud is flexible due to continuous deployment of new software but \nthe edge devices are frozen in time will rapidly be bypassed by more \nflexible solutions. In the past, I\u2019ve discussed<\/a>\n how systems containing mechanical, electronic and software components \ncould be architected to continuously evolve at all levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, \nit requires a much deeper reflection on what actually matters to the \ncustomer or the next layer in the network. For instance, when working \nwith cameras, most engineers focus on image quality and resolution. \nHowever, the more common use cases are concerned with detecting the \npresence or absence of humans, counting the number of people in a room \nor compartment or following motion patterns. In general, detecting \nabnormal behavior or situations is relevant for most edge devices and \nthere often is little need to report when things are normal. Converting \nthe raw data into information that the customer or next layer in the \nnetwork cares about requires significant computing and storage \ncapabilities on the network edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concluding, the cloud-centric perspective that many hold is actually a rather naive point of view. We need to consider the end-to-end architecture of systems and decide what, at this point in the evolution of technology, the right allocation of functionality to the edge, the on-premise servers and the cloud is. The realization that I came to this week is that the capabilities on the edge go way beyond what many people realize. So, I encourage you to live on the edge because it\u2019s a pretty interesting and fun place to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at<\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>) or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With data- and AI-driven development taking over the world, it may easily seem that the cloud is the place where everything happens. This is where the data is stored and analyzed, where the machine- and deep-learning models run and where all the value resides. The perspective of people living in this world is that all … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,9,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":980,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions\/980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}