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Mesh Computing Is Poised to Power Digital Transformation Initiatives into the Future
By Delano Seymour, CTO, EDJX
As we embark on a new year, we take stock of what was and look forward to what’s to come. 2023 holds great technological promise, as compute must continue to move faster than it ever has before to power the world we live in.
More than any year before, in 2023 computing latency and performance gaps will be less and less acceptable. That’s because we’re at an innovation inflection point where a millisecond means the difference between success and failure, life or death. With increasing amounts of compute required at the edge to power use cases such as autonomous vehicles, smart cities and any office or user on the move, the paradigm shift is fully in play; we need to be moving away from the centralized cloud to a decentralized model, where compute is located near us and works for us.
There are so many use cases for decentralized computing that will be part of our everyday world in the near future. By the end of the decade, it’s expected that one trillion devices will be connected to the Internet requiring local compute and storage to process the data generated. As we move toward a world powered by the Internet of Things (IoT) where everything is connected, we will be generating data on an unprecedented scale. And the compute needed to power that world will be required to be located physically near these connected devices and machines. Decentralized computing will dominate internet development over the next ten years and beyond.
Next generation IoT applications, including those driverless cars, smarter and faster artificial intelligence, augmented reality where we truly come together to learn and explore, it will all require computing close by to keep up. Decentralized architecture that allows enterprises to quickly and efficiently deploy to the edge is an imperative. Mesh computing technology is the key to unlocking the door and solving current and emerging latency sensitive uses cases.
Mesh entails a series of compute nodes located close to the action. Because of their proximity to the compute request (or user) the likelihood of an offsite network problem that would affect the movement of the data is drastically reduced and can be counted to run during lapses in connectivity for periods of time.
Mesh computing can best be described by example. We like to use the airport use case. As you move through and airport and use its wifi, you are utilizing individual nodes and as you move through the airport, your connection stays as it is transferred from one node to the next. Mesh computing enables movement and scale for computing, eliminating the need for data to reside in a centralized server or the centralized cloud. This hyper-local compute and storage to process the data generated will support a network that allows organizations to easily, rapidly and cost-effectively deploy to the edge, providing the support that ultimately individuals will need to engage with AI, IoT and 5G applications.
Additionally, security and privacy are enhanced in a mesh computing environment as the need for communication back and forth to the cloud is essentially eliminated. Mesh moves the processing, and application use across nodes, lessening the incidence of disruption.
And finally, mesh offers a sustainability story. It is estimated that between 2% to 3% of the world’s power, and up to 2% of the world’s greenhouse gasses are produced by data centers and the cloud. The assumption is not if this consumption will grow, but by how much. Leaving those massive, energy-needy server farms behind, mesh computing’s needs are a fraction of the cost of the cloud. Even moving data to and from the centralized cloud uses a large amount of power. The local processing and movement that mesh computing supports dramatically reduces consumption. From a sustainability standpoint, the upside is staggering.
Mesh computing is the future for burgeoning IoT technology, 5G applications, and as it is nimble, cost effective and close to the action.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Delano Seymour is the CTO of EDJX and a visionary founder, pioneer, disruptive innovator with several technology patents to date. He was the former founder and president of a high revenue-generating managed services company headquartered in the Caribbean and has experience in taking companies from start-up to acquisition. He is the former CTO of 6fusion, a cloud management platform for workload distributing and has been a global technology speaker at several prestigious industry forums.
