emerson network power, soon to be known as vertiv, is releasing a converged infrastructure solution for edge computing, cloud computing, internet of things, network and data centers, which it believes will be the future for managing distributed computing in a time when connected devices number in the multiples of billions.

(wikimedia commons)

edge computing moves applications, data and computing power away from a centralized point of the network and replicates pieces of data across web servers distributed at various points. this can benefit a company by lowering transmission costs, shrinking latency, and improving quality of service. it also limits the possibility of a bottleneck where a failure could have serious ramification for the entire network.

according to emerson, “converged infrastructure solutions enable enterprises to scale up or down depending on their needs. these solutions combine high-efficiency thermal management, power protection, remote management, and security in a row or rack-based enclosure that can be deployed in almost any environment. remote management also enables it managers to easily manage core and edge infrastructure for maximum availability and efficiency.”

as a recent techcrunch article outlined, there are concerns with cloud computing and a centralized network, including privacy, security and legal challenges, particularly for companies that expand to multiple countries.

the article outlines how fog computing has helped meet the needs of the cloud and pull together the resources necessary for edge computing. the openfog consortium is one group dedicated to pushing industry into fog computing and offers tips and references establishing fog computing architecture.

“the cloud will continue to have a pertinent role in the iot cycle,” according to techcrunch. “in fact, with fog computing shouldering the burden of short-term analytics at the edge, cloud resources will be freed to take on the heavier tasks, especially where the analysis of historical data and large datasets is concerned.”

read more about edge and fog computing at https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/how-fog-computing-pushes-iot-intelligence-to-the-edge and http://readwrite.com/2016/08/05/fog-computing-different-edge-computing-pl1.