How AWS Is Bringing The Cloud To The ‘Edge’ - Amit Gupta, CEO & Founder, Rapyder Cloud Solutions
What is Edge Computing?
Edge computing is touted to be the top-most transformational technologies of the decade. The use cases of this technology have already moved beyond IoT to incorporate broader applications in virtually every industry. Changing market demands are emphasizing the need to distribute compute power closer to end users—to respond in real-time and enable better customer experiences.
How Edge Computing Works?
Edge computing leverages small containerized computing infrastructures with smaller and integrated servers, to reduce the distance between the processing point and consumption point in the network. Latency has been a big challenge with cloud especially for AI-related workloads. Edge computing promises to solve this very issue of cloud latency by making the ‘edges’ more sophisticated and intelligent.
Large hyperscalers like AWS are addressing the need gap by bringing the cloud to the edge, to help enterprises respond faster and provide better customer experience. AWS’ aim is to create a more distributed infrastructure to support edge computing and low-latency applications.
At the center of this mission to power edges with more computing, AWS is banking on key breakthrough technologies that will likely revolutionize edge computing in the coming days.
How AWS is bringing the Cloud to the ‘Edge’
1. AWS Outposts:
Outposts, by now considered the building block for Amazon’s edge strategy, are basically racks filled with turn-key AWS cloud infrastructure. Launched in 2019 to help enterprises deploy hybrid cloud in their own on-premise data centers, Outposts are now being leveraged by AWS to true edge computing experience to customers. Outpost racks are 80? tall, 24? wide, 48? deep, and can weigh up to 2000 lbs. They arrive fully assembled, and roll in on casters, ready for connection to power and networking.
This end-to-end single-vendor compute & storage solution is designed to meet the growing needs of businesses who need local processing and very low latency.
2. AWS Local Zones:
With Local Zones, AWS is bringing compute, storage, database, and other select services closer to locations where no AWS Region exists today—primarily metros. Its very first Local Zone was launched in Los Angeles last year, aiming to help the film and gaming companies based in the city. Following its grand success and increasing adoption, AWS has now launched its second Local Zone in LA to provide ultra-low latency—single digit milliseconds—to customers. Some of the specific use cases that AWS believes can benefit from Local Zones include: media & entertainment content creation, real-time gaming, reservoir simulations, electronic design automation, and machine learning. Managed and supported by AWS, Local Zones offers customers all of the elasticity, scalability, and security benefits of the cloud.
3. AWS Wavelength:
Wavelength is specifically designed to enable next-generation applications on 5G networks. With its partnership with telcos like Verizon, AWS Wavelength embeds compute & storage at the edge of the 5G network. This allows application traffic from 5G devices to reach application servers running in Wavelength Zones without leaving the mobile carrier’s network. Immediate access to a range of cloud services at the 5G edge will allow startups, enterprises, and ISVs quickly build 5G applications, like industrial automation, smart cities, ML-assisted diagnostics, or autonomous vehicles—all of which need ultra-low latency access to end users or end-devices.
4. AWS IoT Greengrass:
Designed specifically for IoT use cases, Greengrass powers the edge devices to act on the data, right at the source, on a real-time basis. For storage, analytics and management, Greengrass uses the AWS public cloud platform—bringing seamless integration experience. Greengrass’ local resource access feature Greengrass Core devices to use local device resources like cameras, serial ports, or GPUs so that device applications can quickly access and process local data.
5. AWS Snowcone:
Launched in June this year, Snowcone is the latest and smallest member of AWS Snow family, designed specifically for uses cases in remote environments where network connectivity is a challenge. This highly secure potable device weighs in at 2.1 kg with 8 terabytes of usable storage. Some key use cases of the device include content distribution, industrial IoT, drones, video content creation and transportation. Customers can use this device or AWS Snowball Like to run edge computing workloads that use AWS IoT Greengrass or Amazon EC2 instances, or to collect, process, and transfer data to AWS.
Think your business needs to get edge computing or cloud computing to its technology stack? Get in touch with the AWS cloud service provider experts at Rapyder today! Contact us now for a free consultation.