If you conduct business in an area where network connectivity is unreliable or bandwidth is restricted, edge computing may improve network performance.
It is important to understand what edge computing is so you can determine if it is something that would benefit your organization.
No one wants to utilize an underperforming network that results in poor employee productivity and inefficiency.
Learning what edge computing is and its benefits to your organization will enable you to determine if it will improve your network.
Coeo has helped thousands of customers with their network performance and knows how important a reliable network is to an organization.
We want you to understand what edge computing is and whether it is right for your organization so you can determine if it will improve your network performance.
By the end of this article, you will know what edge computing is, how it works, and if it is right for your organization.
What is edge computing?
Edge computing is an IT architecture that allows data to be processed at the edge of the network as close to the source of data as possible.
Data is so important to businesses today because it provides highly valuable insight and real-time control over critical business processes and operations.
However, with every business relying on more and more data, this large quantity of data being used causes more bandwidth issues, high latency, and network interruptions for users.
These large quantities of data make the traditional data centers and everyday internet less suitable for managing this data usage across all organizations.
To combat these challenges, edge computing takes a portion of data out of the data center and stores it on the edge of the network closer to the source of the data.
How does edge computing work?
Before learning how edge computing works it is important to understand how traditional computing works.
Traditional computing produces data at the endpoint of the user. The endpoint is typically the device that the user is using whether it be a computer or phone.
This data is then moved across a WAN such as the internet to the corporate LAN where the data is stored. The result of that work is then sent back to the user’s endpoint.
This is the typical approach to client-server computing and has operated this way for many years.
However, the number of devices accessing the internet and the amount of data being produced and consumed by those devices is growing too fast for data centers to accommodate all this traffic.
Gartner, a leading IT research company, predicts that 75% of data generated by organizations will be created outside of traditional centralized data centers no later than 2025.
As a result, IT specialists have shifted their focus from large data centers to the edge of the network infrastructure.
The way they do that is by taking data from the data center and moving these resources to the point where the data is being generated.
The main principle behind edge computing is to move the data center closer to the data itself.
Edge computing puts the servers and storage where the data is instead of having the data sent to and from a data center.
Is edge computing the right fit for your organization?
Edge computing is a strategy that many organizations will be moving to in the next couple of years due to the high volume of data being used by organizations today.
As a result, it is important to understand how your organization can benefit from edge computing.
First, it is important to discuss with your network provider whether the network solutions you are currently using are set up with this architecture.
Regardless of how your current provider’s architecture is set up, it is important to determine if your organization can benefit from using an edge computing architecture.
If your organization is currently dealing with high latency issues, edge computing may help improve this.
Some applications require real-time response times making it difficult to use them when your network is experiencing high latency.
However, if your organization does not experience high latency, you may not be using enough data to justify using edge computing technology.
If your organization has bandwidth limitations your employees may have a difficult time connecting to the network and will experience slow internet speeds.
Edge computing allows you to process data locally without relying on a connection to the server.
This enables you to use less bandwidth and experience less latency.
However, if your organization purchases plenty of bandwidth each month and does not run into any bandwidth limitations, you may not need to focus on edge computing.
Although your organization may not need to convert to edge computing immediately, you may need to consider it in the future.
With organizations using more and more data, it will only make edge computing more of a necessity in the future.
Next steps to using edge computing
Now you know what edge computing is, how it works, and whether edge computing is the right solution for your organization. This information will help you determine whether your organization should utilize edge computing.
No organization wants to experience poor network performance and high latency resulting in poor employee productivity. Edge computing is one way to improve your organization’s network performance and lower latency.
Coeo knows how important network reliability is to organizations and has helped improve the network performance for thousands of customers.
We want you to know what edge computing is so you can determine if it is something your organization will benefit from using.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about edge computing or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Now that you know what edge computing is and if it is right for your organization, you can take our free network assessment tool to test your network performance. 
