Edge computing is one of the biggest data trends of the decade. Huge companies are adopting the technology and more branch sites than ever are recording and storing data. But what does edge mean and does it pose a risk?

Software developers are building new cloud-based software with such ease that there are warnings of future headaches for IT teams responsible for infrastructure and operations. A recent Gartner study found that by 2025, 70% of IT infrastructure teams will be unable to support the business. Only ¼ of IT Infrastructure leaders would have teams with the right skills and working practices to support the requirements for IT operations.

The rate of cloud adoption has increased rapidly, with more and more computing being pushed into the cloud, a trend identified in Serviceteam IT’s Cloud Snapshot Survey 2017. This growth in cloud computing has led to the development of networks of large data centres. However, this is already starting to slow, with an ever-increasing amount of computing moving back to the ‘edge’ of local networks. Processing will always occur wherever it is best placed for a given application at a given time and cloud has given us flexibility of computing resources; but we can’t help but think that reliable, elastic and on-demand networking is imperative to deliver the future.