Finding the right technology solutions these days can feel like trying to hit a moving target. With web applications both increasing in complexity and evolving in a landscape where consumers are demanding higher quality experiences, companies are scrambling to find solutions to support these expanding consumer expectations.
Two of the top new demands from consumers across the globe are faster interactions and a lower tolerance for security breaches around personal data. While cloud computing and the emergence of the large cloud hosts has caused a centralization of compute resources, the next wave of compute innovation is happening at “the edge”.
As organizations look to capitalize on the benefits of edge computing, many are quickly realizing the complexities associated with building and operating distributed systems, leading them to seek out solutions to help to solve this edge puzzle.
The Edge & The Cloud
Edge computing is the practice of capturing, storing, processing, and analyzing data near the client, where the data is generated, instead of in a centralized data-processing warehouse.
Most developers are familiar with cloud deployments, but running workloads across a distributed edge introduces a new set of complexities and considerations. Moving from managing a single deployment endpoint to hundreds or more requires different understanding and skill sets, especially if different microservices also need to be served from different edge locations.
More than that, developers are increasingly being asked to program in a new computing paradigm. Now, they may be asked to work on edge computing as well as hybrid cloud infrastructure. To muddy the waters even further, the parts of the application being moved closer to the end user are also changing. In recent years, application owners have started to migrate more advanced logic, security, and persistent data stores out to the edge. However, the adoption curve has been slow, mainly due to the extreme complexities involved in designing, building, and operating a distributed deployment model.
Overcoming Complexities with Edge as a Service (EaaS)
The reality of deploying and managing workloads at the edge is not simple. The complexities that come with building and operating cloud-edge networks and infrastructure are real.
Every organization, team, and application has unique requirements when it comes to designing distributed systems. Because of this, many teams start down the path of building their own bespoke systems. This can quickly become overwhelming, considering all of the complexities related to system design and implementation.
The real power of the edge arises when we provide application developers the opportunity to seamlessly run the software of their choice at the edge and application operations teams the simplicity of a single delivery plane so they have a reduced operational footprint (even with a larger geographic delivery footprint). In addition to simply understanding edge computing, it’s important to also know how the technology can actually work for you. Solutions like Edge as a Service (EaaS) can help companies looking for ways to use edge computing to power next-gen digital experiences for SaaS, PaaS, and application providers.
Edge as a Service, or EaaS, is a solution that enables software providers to accelerate their path to Edge. With EaaS, software providers gain instant access to an edge deployment model for their solutions without having to build and manage their own edge network. This saves these providers time, effort, and resources by keeping their focus on their products and services instead.
As an EaaS provider, we are quite close to the challenges that our customers encounter around edge technologies. We’re often pulled into projects during the early stages of research and discovery, where we’re able to offload the build and management of many, if not most, of the critical components, ultimately accelerating the path to edge for organizations across a diverse range of use cases.
Webscale CloudFlow’s EaaS simplifies the steps involved in deploying your application to the edge. We take care of the massive complexities and resources necessary to support distributed provisioning, orchestration, scaling, monitoring and routing, allowing you to focus on innovation.
To learn more about solving the edge puzzle, check out this white paper.
