NC Sep-Oct 2022

FEATURE: WAN PERFORMANCE
WAN ACCELERATION OR EDGE COMPUTING?
DAVID TROSSELL, CEO AND CTO OF BRIDGEWORKS, ON DELIVERING HIGHER WAN PERFORMANCE
The effects of the pandemic over the past
couple of years has hastened the move
towards digital transformation and the
cloud for many companies. Organisations
concerned for the safety of their personnel and
what shape organisations will look like in the
future, moved from a traditional capital
expenditure (CapEx) model, to a work from
home and operational expenditure- (OpEx)
based SAAS model. At the same time, there is
a push for IoT devices to monitor and manage
many aspects of our daily lives.
Asynchronous IoT devices only monitor and
report. Many of them are semi-synchronous,
meaning that they not only monitor but also
manage resolutions. However, they are not
time critical. Then there are the IoT devices that
offer fully synchronous monitoring, and which
enact resolutions immediately. These typically
use the cloud for reporting back to a central
collection and decision point. However, we are
seeing more sophisticated IoT applications that
are latency-sensitive and require considerably
more computing resources.
To support the time-sensitive aspect, many
have added an intermediate computing node
between the IoT device and the central cloud
compute and storage node. This can be on
premise of a locally-managed service provider.
CAPTURING DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
Laura LaBerge, a director at McKinsey &
Company of capabilities for digital strategy;
Kate Smaje, a senior partner; and Rodney
Zemmel, a senior partner at the firm, write in
their analysis of a survey entitled, 'Three new
mandates for capturing a digital
transformation's full value': "As organisations
continue to navigate an era of massive
uncertainty and disruption, digital tech is an
increasingly critical differentiator of both
strategy and performance. The actions of
today's best-performing companies reflect that
fact. For all other companies, three lessons
emerge: use digital tech to achieve strategic
differentiation on customer engagement and
innovation; build proprietary assets, such as
software, data and AI, then combine them with
a scalable, cloud-based architecture to create
a strategic advantage; and focus the quest for
digital talent on C-suite and other executives,
given the talent integration challenges that
many companies continue to face."
EDGE CONCERNS REMAIN
Part of the digital transformation equation -
particularly with the rise of the Internet of
Things - is the growing use of edge computing.
But while the pandemic has certainly led to a
growth in edge and fog computing, as with
digital transformation itself, some concerns
remain. With edge computing, there is an
increased number of attack points open to
cyber-attacks. Also, the distance from the IoT
devices creates limitations, and so there is a
need to put computing power into the edge
computing environment because of latency.
Nevertheless, much still depends on where the
'edge' is, and it very much depends on the
communications infrastructure. That aside, with
more storage and compute capacity at the
edge, organisations can implement AI
functionality, further reducing the workload at
the central cloud compute node.
With latency being a concern, to what extent
does edge computing rely on artificial
intelligence and machine learning to boost
WAN performance? Well, for example, the
pandemic has reshaped the way in which we
now consume entertainment. There has been a
massive transition from free to air television,
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