In this issue of the President's Letter, Frederica explores the benefits between: Edge Computing and Cloud Computing Judy Homer President, JB Homer Associates

Edge computing is meant to push the frontier of computing applications, data, and services away from centralized nodes to the logical extremes of a network. It enables analytics and knowledge generation to occur at the source of the data. This approach requires leveraging resources that may not be continuously connected to a network such as laptops, smart phones, tablets and sensors.

Today the IoT is jumping to the forefront of business. Smart phones and AI-powered devices seek to connect instantly via the IoT. Yet, sending this data all the way to the cloud will become highly impractical. Many of these devices will need real time response and processing, making Edge computing the only viable option. Edge will be the "go-to" for processing in real time, and the cloud will be used for the most important and relevant data.

As the IoT accumulates massive volumes of data coming from fundamentally different sources, Edge computing will be the next pioneering investment for companies to position themselves for growth in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This will bring minds and machines together to accelerate the digital industrial transformation, effectuating change for new business models to capture untapped value from machine data, applying advanced analytics and machine learning to operations.

Edge computing will dominate when speed is of the essence, or where there are bandwidth constraints in mobile devices. Conversely, Cloud computing will take a more dominant position when action requires significant computing power. Both Cloud and Edge computing are necessary for industrial operations to gain the most value, wherever it makes sense to apply them in order to achieve the desired outcomes. Edge computing solves the problem between waiting for real time to send data to the Cloud Computing Center and waiting to receive the decision which creates a delay in the transmittance process.

Please give us an example of how you and your organization are involved in Edge computing.