At the risk of giving away the conclusion too early, there’s a clear place — not to mention, a need — for both application and infrastructure deployments in the cloud and on the edge. Centralizing data and the processing it in the cloud can be efficient and effective, but where latency can’t be tolerated, some amount of processing needs to be carried out at the edge. In fact, it’s often easier and more efficient to bring the processing to the data than it is to bring the data to the processing engine.
While some edge data sources are fairly mundane — remote and branch offices, highly automated worksites like oil rigs, and even simple power meters — the collection options have grown immensely and they don’t show any signs of slowing down. The IoT enables all kinds of devices to constantly record data — from refrigerators to TVs to speakers to cars, it seems that everything is collecting information. Some of it is used right away, but most of it is simply be stored for a future, possible use.