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On Wednesday, Oct. 9, at 11 a.m. PST/2 p.m. EST/7 p.m. GMT, @eWEEKNews will host its 80th #eWEEKChat, the first since last May (we took a summer hiatus for the first time since this series debuted in January 2013). The topic will be “Edge Computing: IT’s Newest Greenfield.” It will be moderated by Chris Preimesberger, eWEEK’s editor in chief.
Our special expert guests include:
—Zeus Kerravala, principal of ZK Research, eWEEK contributor and former longtime analyst at Yankee Group. He will bring outstanding perspectives to this topic.
—Sean Leach, Chief Architect at edge cloud platform maker Fastly, has 20 years of experience in building and scaling the technology and product around large scale, mission-critical infrastructure.
—Laz Vekiarides is the co-founder and CTO of ClearSky Data. Prior to starting ClearSky, he served as executive director of software engineering for Dell’s EqualLogic Storage Engineering Group.
—Dr. Tom Bradicich is VP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise fellow and global head of Edge and IoT CoE & Labs at HPE. He directed the global HPE Discovery Labs and IoT Innovation Labs for partner and customer collaborations and conceived and led HPE’s first corporate IoT strategy.
Topic: “Promise and Potential of Edge Computing”
Date/time: Oct. 9, 2019 @11a.m. PST/2 p.m. EST/7 p.m. GMT
Hosted by: @eWEEKNews
Moderator: Chris Preimesberger: @editingwhiz
Tweetchat handle: You can use #eWEEKChat to follow/participate via Twitter itself, but it’s easier and more efficient to use the real-time chat room link at CrowdChat. Instructions are on that page.
Why Computing Is Moving Out to the Edge
Enterprise IT is rapidly moving its flanks to the edge—to the edge of a whole new greenfield IT industry that may turn out to be as important as, if not more important than, the cloud itself.
That could be hyperbole, but be assured that’s not intended. This isn’t theory; it’s happening, and fast.
Edge computing, generally, is any type of computing that takes place outside a data center. Smartphones, smart TVs, laptops, desktop PCs, small servers and routers, sensors and other similar devices can be considered “edge” devices. Edge computing also entails a growing genre of infrastructure-class computing platforms aimed at hyperscale cloud data centers to the network edge that are playing an increasingly important role in a distributed IT computing environment driven by the rise of the internet of things (IoT).
All of this has to be managed and managed effectively.
The closer proximity to computing resources makes an edge-computing platform much more efficient for workloads that require near-immediate response times. For example, these use cases can range from security networks to video, media delivery to IoT and ad tech to finance.
“The internet has grown bigger and bigger but, from an end user or client perspective, it hasn’t grown closer and closer,” StackPath co-founder and CEO Lance Crosby, generally considered the pioneer of edge computing, said. “The most secure and innovative applications today need to get data back and forth—and processed in between—faster. You don’t want security requests or urgent data hopping around the world. That’s what StackPath Edge Computing is all about. Process it faster, safer. Right at the edge.”
How It Will Affect Us All
How will this movement from centralized systems to smaller, more distributed IT impact enterprises and us as consumers? Will we even notice a difference—outside of a little more speed in getting things done? How will it affect security? The more systems, large or small, that are in production, the more attack surfaces there are for the bad guys looking for information, data and illicit profits.
We’re looking for perspectives based on what you see happening now. Some of the questions we’ll ask:
- How do edge computing platforms relate to a company’s public and private cloud strategy?
- At a high level, what does edge computing software / systems bring to new-gen IT systems?
- What are some of the greenfield areas of edge computing where we expect to see high growth?
- How do edge computing and IoT technologies work together to provide new efficiencies?
- Where do you see key trends in the edge computing sector over the next 12 to 24 months?
Join us Oct. 9 at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. GMT for 30 to 40 minutes. Chances are good that you’ll learn something valuable.
#eWEEKchat 2019 Schedule: All Tweetchats start at 11 a.m. PT / 2 p.m. ET
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