According to Google Trends data, worldwide searches for ‘edge computing’ have increased tenfold in the last five years. Google alone boasts 340 million search results for the phrase – hardly simple revision for those curious about the technology. Among the noise, and the varying definitions of what edge computing actually is, the technology has become somewhat misunderstood.
Edge computing describes a distributed version of computation that brings data analysis closer to the data source. In a factory setting, this could see data processing take place at the machine level. Unlike centralised models, where information would be sent to a data centre or the cloud, edge computing allows data capture, analysis and action to be performed on the edge of a process, hence the name.
Despite its capabilities, edge computing is not a replacement for centralised data-storage methods, or an alternative to other data processing and management technologies. In fact, these...