- I mean, while 4G can handle up to 4,000 devices
per kilometer, with 5G,
it's supposed to be insanely large.
Almost up to a million devices per kilometer.
Up to 20 gig per user. (connecting breaking)
- Azhar, Azhar, you're breaking up.
Looks like we lost Azhar.
Today this seems like the norm.
It seems like our networks are never fast enough
but many of us actually take
our high-speed data for granted.
And it wasn't so long ago
that we were still dialing up at a blazing 56 k per second
and our favorite streaming or ride share apps
just weren't possible.
Our data workloads are exploding
and as we move our storage and compute out further
to the edge, we face the next wave of innovation
that will have a profound impact on our lives.
But what is edge?
And why is it so exciting?
(upbeat music)
Edge is a distributed computing architecture
that brings compute closer to the things
and the people that produce and use data.
This proximity to data
can allow for the real-time processing
and decision making that's going to fundamentally change
how businesses and consumers use and interact with data.
When you bring compute closer to data,
this will inherently cut down on latency.
(typing)
Latency is the time it takes for data
to travel from node to node.
Latency is dependent on the physical distance
that data must travel
through cords and networks and the like
to reach its destination.
Or from user experience perspective,
latency is perceived as a time delay
between the stimulus and response
when compared to a real-world equivalent.
(computer dinging)
Oh, hey, Azhar, welcome back.
- Sorry about that, Chris.
Don't know what happened there.
- It's cool.
It got me on the topic of latency and edge compute.
- Oh, do you want me to explain the onion?
- You just have that at your desk?
- Well, actually it's a good metaphor.
It helps us visualize the edge architecture for telcos.
As we peel each layer off this particular onion,
we can find the next layer and then the next layer
is another edge.
- Totally, you know, we often describe the edge
like an onion but actually,
I have an animation that might be a bit easier.
In a traditional network,
compute was centralized with the data center at the core
but with faster infrastructure and growing workloads,
we need to move computing capacity out
of data centers and closer to where the action is.
Each tier of the network has layers of edge,
enterprise edge, the provider edge,
the end-user premises edge.
The network has an edge
and a set of network-specific applications that power it.
Edge means different things to different people.
(door knocking) And ultimately.
- [Son] Dad, the Wi-Fi's not working.
- How many times I've told you,
it's not our network?
Sorry, Chris.
He plays Fortnite and every time there's an issue,
he blames our network for it.
- Of course. - Dad.
- I've told you about the onion.
Sorry, Chris, I need to run.
- No worries, got it.
Good luck.
- Thanks.
- Ah yeah, yeah, I read this.
This is a pretty good article.
Let's give Nick a call.
(computer dinging)
Hey Nick, how's it going?
- Hi Chris, what's up?
- One of the things I've noticed
about edge computing is it gets closer
to the core of our customers' businesses,
so the use cases I think are more industry-specific.
I just wanna check in with you.
What kind of use cases are you seeing?
- We are seeing a wide variety of use cases.
There are some industrial use cases
where we need to do predictive maintenance
on some equipment
or where we need to enforce worker safety
or we have health use cases
where we help with diagnosis.
- Or work on a common platform,
that kind of view of the world
and where data and probably even AI
and machine learning becomes some
of the common tools but solving very different problems.
- What's really important here
is the fact that we are generating more data
than we can flow directly to a data center.
You know how when you're building a website,
we're saying that if the page
will take more than two seconds to load,
people are going to get discouraged?
Here we are talking about processes
that maybe discourage after a few milliseconds.
So if we need fast response time,
we cannot afford sending it
to a central data center and waiting
for the answer to get back.
We also have a problem of scale.
What was possible for the past 10 years
when we were accumulating data centrally
is very, very quickly becoming impossible to maintain.
- I think of edge computing
as distributed systems on steroids.
I mean, we're really talking about a large scale
of distributed computing.
- We cannot scale the number of humans linearly
with the number of sites we are deploying onto.
So we need a lot of automation to cover for that.
Interoperability is linked to the fact
that each layer of our edge
may have different kinds of hardware,
hardware that you own, hardware that you rent,
hardware you have physical access to.
Hardware you will never ever see.
The administrator, the developer shouldn't have to worry
about where an application is going to be deployed.
It should work the same way.
It should behave the same way.
It's just the infrastructure layer
that is going to make that invisible for them.
- To me that really shouts out
extending the hybrid cloud
from data centers on premises and out to public clouds
and then including these edge deployments
or think about that as an edge cloud.
Really extending what the hybrid cloud is capable of
and that consistency and interoperability
and scalability to me are really core.
I really enjoyed your article.
And I got something out of that
so that's why I wanted to give you a call
and hear more directly what your thoughts were.
So I appreciate it, thank you.
- Thanks for reaching out, Chris.
Always a pleasure.
- Think about just how quickly things have advanced.
4G services only became widely available in the US in 2012,
less than 10 years ago.
5G will provide higher bandwidth,
ultra-low latency and hundreds of new IoT devices.
The influx of data from these devices drive the need
for edge computing.
The 5G and edge compute transformation
is just getting started.
In another 10 years, when we're onto the next wave
of innovation, what will we be taking for granted?
(upbeat music)
(logos whooshing)