OVER the past few years, a significant number of organizations worldwide have started to incorporate cloud into their operations, gathering insights from large amounts of data that help them achieve key business outcomes.

Cloud traffic is expected to increase almost four times by 2020. Simultaneously, the Internet of Things (the billions of devices around the world sending and receiving data across the internet) market is expected to reach $267 billion in the same period.

The Middle East and Africa is no exception. The region is expected to see an exponential growth in data centre traffic, estimated to reach one quintillion bytes per year by 2020.

However, as the IoT continues to grow and businesses realize its benefits, the next breakthrough capability is to enable IoT devices themselves to evolve.

That’s where edge computing comes in. The network edge is the name given to the many computing devices that intersect with the real world, from small devices like internet-connected cameras, microwaves and smart watches, to large and complex ones like autonomous cars.

Mohammed Radwan, Cloud and Enterprise Business Group Lead at Microsoft Arabia, said: “In the next 10 years, nearly all our everyday devices - and many new ones we haven’t created yet -will be connected. These devices are all becoming so “smart” that they can power advanced algorithms that help them see, listen, reason, predict and more, without requiring “always on” connectivity the cloud.” He added: “This is the intelligent edge, and it will define the next wave of innovation – not just for business but also how we address some of the world’s most pressing problems.”

As more computing, storage and analytical capacity is bundled into smaller devices that sit closer to the data, edge computing can reduce latency and unplanned downtime, improve asset performance, lower the cost of maintenance and increase production efficiency.

With the increasing shift to centralised cloud computing comes unprecedented volumes of data, which can easily become unmanageable. As a result, there is an increasing need to turn the massive amounts of machine-based data into actionable intelligence closer to the source, or the edge.

However, that’s not to say edge computing makes cloud computing redundant. For the two to work most effectively, they need to work together.

Cloud computing remains important when it comes to actions requiring significant computing power, managing data volumes from different parts of the organization, asset monitoring and machine learning.

On the other hand, edge computing comes into play when there is a need for immediate actions, there are connectivity constraints or there is a need for flexibility and customization of processes and products. That is, the goal is to process the data from the device that needs it quickly, so that it can take the next most relevant action. There are many cases where reaction time is the key value of IoT, and consistently sending the data back to the centralised cloud prevents that value from being realized.

Mohammed Radawan added: “Moving cloud analytics and custom business logic to IoT Edge becomes essential for organizations, in order for them to focus on business insights instead of data management, and enable their solutions to truly scale by configuring the IoT software, deploying it to devices via standard containers, and monitoring it all from the cloud, which will result an efficient reduce in cost and time, instead of allocating these efforts in collecting and managing the data”

Combining cloud and edge computing ensures that businesses have both the big data and the more granular data they need to succeed in the short and long term.

As Gartner stated in its Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018, “when used as complementary concepts, cloud can be the style of computing used to create a service-oriented model and a centralized control and co-ordination structure, with edge being used as a delivery style allowing for disconnected or distributed process execution of aspects of the cloud service.”

Aside from managing data more effectively, another benefit of processing data close to where it is collected, is latency. In simple terms, latency is the lag that comes from sending information to the cloud and waiting for results to be returned. This can hinder certain applications, such as autonomous cars that need to react instantly.

Intel estimates that autonomous cars, with hundreds of on-vehicle sensors, will generate 4TB of data for an hour and a half of driving. Most of this data does not need to be sent to the cloud – in fact, it would be unsafe, unnecessary and impractical to do so.

However, the cloud still has a role to play here too. The data showing that the car had to respond to such an immediate event may be valuable to the car manufacturer as it works on building future models.

Because of the nature of cloud computing to keep the data close to the source, it is possible for businesses in sectors such as manufacturing to stay up to date with the maintenance of their machinery.

For example, in a fleet management scenario, data is gathered from multiple operational points, such as the wheels, brakes, battery and electrical system. Using edge computing, the fleet manager can monitor each of these points on each of the vehicles in the fleet and proactively service the vehicle, maximizing uptime and reducing costs.

These examples may seem fantastical, but edge computing is part of Microsoft’s quest to make computing and artificial intelligence (AI) more accessible and inclusive for everyone. This is because computing power will be embedded everywhere and into every device – not only in the cloud – giving everyone the opportunity to use intelligence in a way that makes them more productive and benefits society. “Think of the world as a computer,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earlier this year.

The shift to AI is all about data. Now that there is big data in the cloud, device data and event-driven data, AI can be distributed more widely.

Far from making it more difficult to start a business, this creates opportunities for a whole new wave of businesses, whose participation in edge computing plays a significant role in this shift. Simultaneously, the potential for cost saving and the ability to simplify solutions make edge computing a no-brainer.

This is especially true for businesses in continuously developing markets across the Middle East and Africa, which have a real opportunity to gain “the edge” over their global counterparts.