CLOUD & EDGE intelligence and automation being implemented to optimise product design and testing as well as actual production processes ,” predicts Connor .
Alongside manufacturing , the growth of edge micro data centres will benefit retail , transport , education , healthcare , logistics and countless other sectors .
Furthermore , edge sensors , devices and infrastructure can all be installed retrospectively , as businesses jump on the bandwagon and upgrade their existing facilities to utilise the edge .
“ Smart transport , smart cities , smart retail . To this list can be added smart homes , smart healthcare , smart energy , almost every activity can benefit from the addition of some kind of intelligence and / or automation . Our daily domestic and working lives , which increasingly intersect thanks to the digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic , will feature literally hundreds of edge interactions ,” Connor adds .
What will need to happen before the ‘ edge wave ’ can break ? As experts across the industry warn , these exciting , futuristic predictions can ’ t occur without a serious development of infrastructure .
“ I think the growth of the edge will force the data centre community to rethink how we need to deploy infrastructure ,” predicts Tony Grayson , the General Manager of Compass
Quantum at Compass Datacenters .
“ The companies we are supporting today do not know what their future requirements will be , but do know they will require the ability to deploy applications and workloads wherever needed .”
Some industry experts suggest that the current method for creating data centres is unsustainable and that a more dynamic approach will be adopted in the very near future .
“ Right now , large , centralised data centre facilities are the norm . But this is beginning to change with the realisation that the local , real-time requirements of so many edge applications require a small , local , fast , agile , flexible and , importantly , scalable data centre
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