Evolution of Edge Computing and its impact on data centres

Edge computing finds use cases in industries ranging from automobile to cloud gaming. All driverless vehicles on the road utilise edge computing

Global digitisation has brought about massive data growth across all industries. According to Statista, the total amount of data generated, computed, and analysed is projected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes by 2025. With the advent of 5G technologies, the business models of most economies are likely to change. Smartphones and ultra-high-speed internet connectivity will facilitate faster local data collection and drive more people to digital or IoT-based decision-making. However, conveying such a high volume of data to centralised hyper-scale data centres will enhance the latency and inefficiencies in the data processing. Thus, edge computing architectures are increasingly being set up to process and analyse data where they are generated.

What is Edge Computing?

In Industry 4.0, edge computing has evolved as a computational framework that supports the collection, storage, and processing of data at the periphery of the network. Edge data centres gather data from endpoints and process it immediately within the same environment without resorting to centralised data computing services. This boosts business performance, reduces operational costs, and facilitates reliability and resiliency. Businesses leveraging edge computing can make faster decisions depending on the local demand and supply requirements and purchase analysis.

Business leveraging edge computing can make faster decisions depending on the local demand and supply requirements and purchase analysis.

Edge computing finds use cases in industries ranging from automobile to cloud gaming. All driverless vehicles on the road utilise edge computing AI programs and are trained using data centre ML models. Local data processing on mobile edge computing offers a faster and true-to-life gaming experience. Sensors and IoT devices connected to an edge platform in factories and plants can monitor real-time energy consumption and predict the maintenance of machines. Content like music, video streams, and web pages can be delivered with flexibility and next-zero buffering, improving latency and user experience. With the growing adoption of IoT across industries and the evolving fifth-generation technology, the edge data centre market size is expected to grow from $7.2 billion in 2021 to $19.1 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 21.4%.

Factors affecting the evolution of Edge Data Centres in India

Industries during the COVID-19 pandemic have witnessed a shift to extended reality technologies like IoT, AR, VR, and AI. Users increasingly look to leverage the advantages of field service solutions, boosting the adoption of edge data centres across industry verticals. While India moves through a technological revolution, the following factors will affect the evolution of data centres from the count of 138 in 2022 to 183 by 2025.

IoT adoption

India has 744 million smartphone users and is forecast to reach 1.5 billion by 2040. The exponential growth of internet infrastructure has shifted business models to an inclusive digital economy, with a vast amount of data being generated in the form of texts, images, audio, and videos. Transmitting the collected data to the central ecosystem and retrieving processed outcomes to the endpoints would increase network latency and result in an industry slowdown.

Edge DCs process a more significant percentage of data too close to the end-users to facilitate technologies like IoT, blockchain content delivery networks, real-time video streaming, real-time video analytics, and interactive gaming. They support connected factories, smart cities, multi-party video conferencing, smart homes, and online shopping with ultra-low latency and reduced operational costs. Cloud-based business processes like the ERP and supply chain tools require edge computing to connect across different geographical locations and communicate through the multi-cloud.

5G services

India’s 5G rollout will witness a 100x increase in traffic capacity and network efficiency, raising bandwidth constraints, latency concerns, and unprecedented network disruptions at traditional data centres. Edge computing may combat such challenges with faster response times, deeper insights, and enhanced consumer experiences. The user-centric infrastructure analyses enormous data on-site in near real-time, integrating new-age technologies and facilitating a $9.28 billion IoT market by 2025.

How will the deployment of Edge solutions boost the industry?

Since micro data centres are deployed far outside the core data processing units, edge computing infrastructures should be more scalable, efficient, self-healing, and reliable. They need advanced security against sophisticated threats like lateral attacks, account theft, entitlement theft, DDoS attacks, and data sprawl. Thus, edge centre solutions should include the required physical infrastructure to support, power, cool, secure, and monitor the IT environment. These highly standardised items provide greater adaptability and scalability based on needs and constraints.

Leading Data Centre Infrastructure Solutions offer integrated power distribution through UPS, power distribution cabinets, and management units for eco-friendly data rooms. Their high-efficiency components can be assembled easily with modular server racks and accessories. The optimised installation and operation costs of the power devices facilitate enterprise growth with enhanced scalability. Moreover, advanced precision cooling and energy-saving components aim to save more than 25% of energy and offer a robust environment-management system with greater data centre security.

Final Words

With digital transformation, the availability of local edge computing sites is gaining importance for business continuity. More than 102 edge data centres are likely to be established in rural and semi-urban regions of India to roll out 5G services and bridge the digital divide. However, the challenges of edge centres regarding infrastructure and data security must be addressed with state-of-the-art solutions to meet user demands. With integrated power management solutions and scalable components, edge centres will contribute significantly to the 2,200 thousand square feet data centre market by 2027.

By Deepak Thakur

Business Head of MCIS Solutions, Delta Electronics India.

feedbackvnd@cybermedia.co.in